Tea: A Very British Beverage

by Paul Chrystal

The ubiquitous cup of tea is as much a part of British life as indifferent weather, the BBC or the queue at the post office. Look at the we Britons drink 62 billion cups per year; 70 per cent of the population (over age ten) drank tea yesterday; over 25 per cent of milk consumed in the UK goes into your cup of tea. Tea, since its arrival here in the seventeenth century, has shaped our lives, our history, our work, our culture and even our bodies. Not surprisingly for a drink that we take throughout the day, every day, there is a fascinating story to tell about its origins and how it took Britain by storm to become our second most-popular beverage after tap water. This book begins with the early history of tea and goes on to chart its development as something quintessentially British with it slowly but surely insinuating itself into our culture, language and society. Our loss of the American colonies, the Opium Wars, female emancipation and victory in the Second World War all owe something to a nice cup of tea. Tea is synonymous with Britain. The story of our intimate relationship with tea is in effect the social history of Britain, reflecting aspects of the nation's trade, manners, fashion, art, drinking habits, industrial legislation, foreign policy, and its health. Like Samuel Johnson, we just can't get enough of 'You cannot make tea so fast as I can gulp it down.' So, put the kettle on, and read the amazing tale of tea …

Genres: Tea, Food, Nonfiction

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 19, 2014

About the author

Paul Chrystal attended the Universities of Hull and Southampton where he took degrees in Classics. For the next thirty-five years he worked in medical publishing, much of the time as an international sales director for one market or another while latterly creating medical educational programmes for the pharmaceutical industry. He worked for companies such as Churchill Livingstone, Wiley-Blackwell, CRC Press, Academic Press and Elsevier.

Reviews

[WalderianWarden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely, informative, rich in detail!

[Starfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, so I have mixed feelings about this one.

I thought that, as a 96-page book, it was going to be a quick read, but despite having some really interesting info in it, I found it a struggle - I really felt like I was wading through quicksand at several points in the book, and it felt much, much longer than it was.

Part of that, I think, wasn't the author's fault. It was a combination of the layout choices (small font with very little line or paragraph spacing) and copy editing choices (monster-length paragraphs and sentences - seriously: half-page, 20-25-line paragraphs are NOT my friends, and I didn't even try counting the words in some of the longer sentences)

But another part of it WAS down to the author. The writing voice was dry and factual, to the point that I felt I was reading a university textbook, rather than something for pleasure. I had a definite sense that there'd be a quiz at the end of it, so I should really try to memorise all those dates, names and places as I went along.

Apparently, Mr Crystal was a medical writer for 35 years before he started writing books, since then he's written about 30 books, all on different subjects. And yeah: that would explain a lot - I get the sense that he's all about the research and bringing a vast amount of information together in historical order (mostly), rather than about writing a readable book about something he's genuinely interested in.

That said, there WAS a lot of fascinating information about the history of tea in the UK. And I had several wincy-face moments learning about the extent to which colonisation and exploitation are woven in with the history of my favourite beverage. (Not enough to put me off drinking it now, in the days of fair trade and sustainable growing/harvesting, I should add, but enough to feel deeply uncomfortable with what's gone before.)

All in all, I'd probably only recommend this book to people who've already read a fair amount about tea and want to go deeper into this particular aspect of its history (and if you're a uni student or recent graduate who's still in practice with reading academic books, you'll probably find it easier to read through!)