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Black Tea
Black Tea is a book about Russia that starts in London at the height of the Cold War and ends on a beach in Crimea forty years later. It takes those elements of the writer's life that were forged into something new during the disruption and breakup of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, to create a different kind of memoir based on reflections, memory, and a narration that starts in England and leads the reader on a journey through Russia from the White Sea to the Caucasus.
It tells two stories, one that begins in suburban England in the 70s, and one that traces the course of a love affair in Moscow twenty years later. They are narrated during the course of a journey through Russia at the time of the commemorations for the hundred-year anniversary of the revolution in 2017.
The book comes to terms with what has been described as the central lacuna in twentieth-century thought - the tacit support for communism by Western intellectuals. It describes the author's father's support of Russia and his activism on behalf of nuclear disarmament in the 1970s, and contrasts this with his grandmother's stark warnings of the evils of socialism, and his own ambiguous position growing up in the suburbs outside London, a position that was for many years dominated, in spirit, by a huge military map of the Soviet Union tacked to his bedroom wall.
In the first section of the book the author leaves England to visit his family in Russia. They go on a camping trip to the White Sea, driving north on the Archangel Road to the old labour camp on the island of Solovki.
The camping holiday comes to an end in the breakfast bar of a chalet-hotel. And so begins an extended journey alone. Morris drives back to Moscow, to the flat where he once lived and which is now empty but still full of memories. He tells the story of the August coup of 1991 and the October disturbances two years later, of the tanks on the streets, the bombardment of the Russian parliament building, and the partisan welcome he received during the nights of troubles from those people who felt they were fighting against the reactionary forces of repression.
From Moscow he takes a train south to the Caucasus. He reflects on the emotional end of his own marriage and on the death of his father and grandmother. Morris travels to Astrakhan, the failed final destination of Hitler's sixth army who were desperate to reach the oil fields. From Astrakhan he takes a bus to Elbrus, the highest peak in the Caucasus and then continues on to Grozny, a destroyed city, now rebuilt but still festering from its wounds. The final stage in the journey takes him to Crimea, the scene of his own love-story, and the destination over years of countless Russian and Soviet lovers and would-be lovers, looking for happiness in the coves and dark-sand beaches along the Black Sea coast.
Highly informed with a unique perspective, Black Tea chronicles the changing face of Russia over his thirty years there. A reflection and a travelogue, Steve Morris hauntingly explores love and identity, commitment and family.
223 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 25, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 26, 2022
I love reading travel logs, but there is a certain formula to them: stranger in a strange land who shows up at some place unusual. He walks across rivers, climbs mountains, travels through them by bus and speaks to the locals. With travel logs it is as if I am traveling through the country. Well, this book is not like that. It is so refreshing to read a different kind of travel log. In fact, I am not even sure if you can call Black Tea by Stephen Morris a travel log. Steve Morris is an English man, whose connections with Russia have been active for decades. His women is Russian, his kids are part Russia, his friends are Russian etc. He is as much Russian as he is English, as he knows their literature and speaks their language. But the Russian he first went to is not the Russia of today. His relationship with the woman he married is not the love affair he has today. Morris attempts to understand his marriage and by extension his relationship with Russia in this book. It is hunting and informed in a way that travel logs are not. Black Tea is so different, and so much more than just a travel log. I highly recommend reading this book. I gave it 5 out of 5 stars.
November 5, 2019
A beautiful portrayal of Russia as well as an immersive and captivating journey into Russian history and culture. This memoir describes one man's love affair with a vast and complicated country. Would highly recommend!
August 23, 2020
On the face of it, this is a travel memoir about Russia, meandering by way of the author's youth in the Home Counties and his current existence in rural Suffolk. But it's as much an exploration through misted glasses of the inner landscape, of mind and self and relationships and fragmented memories, as an exploration of place and history.
Morris has a Russian wife, and has spent much of the past 30 years immersed in Russian culture. But his love affair with the place began in childhood with a map on his wall. One can picture him closeted in his room, gazing at his map and dreaming, perhaps some Rachmaninov wafting up from his mother's piano, while his father, an ardent campaigner for nuclear disarmament, typed furiously in the next room, fearful of nuclear armageddon.
Morris describes his quest in life for truth, and living as if solving a problem. This deeply personal and honest book is imbued with a sense of loss and yearning, of disconnection, with a dreamy quality as if hovering on the edge of a revelation or resolution. You feel he’s trying to grasp something, but neither he nor we know what it is.
The spine of the book is a road trip from the family’s dacha near Moscow to the Crimea by way of a Soviet prison camp on an island in the White Sea. When Morris turns up unexpectedly at the dacha from Britain, his wife and children look at him as if they’ve seen a ghost. It sets the tone for Morris’s eternal questing - in this instance for ‘the kind of family holiday we never used to take’- which again slips from his grasp. A slow, solo, spontaneous journey ensues, gently persistent, but stopping and going where his mood takes him.
Woven with beautifully chronicled historic episodes, cultural and social insights, and lots of ideas to be pondered and savoured along the way, the result is a more nuanced and revealing book than one written by the conventional travel writer who goes on an investigative quest from A to B.
Morris is not just a writer but a gifted artist and musician, who attended the Royal Academy Schools, and studied cello under celebrated cellist Christopher Bunting. Like all artists, he is presumably compelled to create as a way of making sense of his life experiences. His original approach to life conditions his writing, which is executed not in an ordered, linear way, but built up in daubs and layers like an oil painting, with the whole picture emerging only at the end. Highly recommended.
Morris has a Russian wife, and has spent much of the past 30 years immersed in Russian culture. But his love affair with the place began in childhood with a map on his wall. One can picture him closeted in his room, gazing at his map and dreaming, perhaps some Rachmaninov wafting up from his mother's piano, while his father, an ardent campaigner for nuclear disarmament, typed furiously in the next room, fearful of nuclear armageddon.
Morris describes his quest in life for truth, and living as if solving a problem. This deeply personal and honest book is imbued with a sense of loss and yearning, of disconnection, with a dreamy quality as if hovering on the edge of a revelation or resolution. You feel he’s trying to grasp something, but neither he nor we know what it is.
The spine of the book is a road trip from the family’s dacha near Moscow to the Crimea by way of a Soviet prison camp on an island in the White Sea. When Morris turns up unexpectedly at the dacha from Britain, his wife and children look at him as if they’ve seen a ghost. It sets the tone for Morris’s eternal questing - in this instance for ‘the kind of family holiday we never used to take’- which again slips from his grasp. A slow, solo, spontaneous journey ensues, gently persistent, but stopping and going where his mood takes him.
Woven with beautifully chronicled historic episodes, cultural and social insights, and lots of ideas to be pondered and savoured along the way, the result is a more nuanced and revealing book than one written by the conventional travel writer who goes on an investigative quest from A to B.
Morris is not just a writer but a gifted artist and musician, who attended the Royal Academy Schools, and studied cello under celebrated cellist Christopher Bunting. Like all artists, he is presumably compelled to create as a way of making sense of his life experiences. His original approach to life conditions his writing, which is executed not in an ordered, linear way, but built up in daubs and layers like an oil painting, with the whole picture emerging only at the end. Highly recommended.
August 2, 2021
⁰A travel odyssey, a memoir, a thinly disguised lament for former times, Black Tea contrasts the old Soviet Russia with the new. The new doesn't always emerge well.
Author Stephen Morris is revisiting the scenes of his marriage to the beautiful Lyuba but in each far off corner of the massive Russian Empire all the old buildings have been torn down and replaced. Alternatively there are areas just littered and virtually derelict.
From the very beginning there seems to be a question mark hovering over Morris's marriage and the unwelcome changes become apparent as metaphors for the authors life.
He doesn't shy away from describing the cruelty, brutality and sheer horror of Russian history over the past 100 years, dwelling increasingly on this during his journey south to the Crimea.
It's a very long journey, involving weeks of trains and buses. I began to feel brutalised and depressed as he dwelt on the might of the Russian State, taking on presumably, some of Morris's own sensations. At the same time it was clear how strongly he is in love with his adopted country, if only it could stay the same. Of course, it can't. Nothing ever does.
I had a special interest here. I was one of the earliest official tourists in Soviet Russia and although coping with many discomforts, have nevertheless never forgotten the sheer difference, the strangeness of Russian mentality.
Morris makes the point, near the beginning of his account, how his friend Nick is only ever commissioned to make documentaries about the shocking sides (often brutal) to Russia. This is an attempt to give a more balanced view. Yes, there are great differences but that does NOT make them evil. Just foreign.
Author Stephen Morris is revisiting the scenes of his marriage to the beautiful Lyuba but in each far off corner of the massive Russian Empire all the old buildings have been torn down and replaced. Alternatively there are areas just littered and virtually derelict.
From the very beginning there seems to be a question mark hovering over Morris's marriage and the unwelcome changes become apparent as metaphors for the authors life.
He doesn't shy away from describing the cruelty, brutality and sheer horror of Russian history over the past 100 years, dwelling increasingly on this during his journey south to the Crimea.
It's a very long journey, involving weeks of trains and buses. I began to feel brutalised and depressed as he dwelt on the might of the Russian State, taking on presumably, some of Morris's own sensations. At the same time it was clear how strongly he is in love with his adopted country, if only it could stay the same. Of course, it can't. Nothing ever does.
I had a special interest here. I was one of the earliest official tourists in Soviet Russia and although coping with many discomforts, have nevertheless never forgotten the sheer difference, the strangeness of Russian mentality.
Morris makes the point, near the beginning of his account, how his friend Nick is only ever commissioned to make documentaries about the shocking sides (often brutal) to Russia. This is an attempt to give a more balanced view. Yes, there are great differences but that does NOT make them evil. Just foreign.
October 9, 2020
Black Tea is as much a memoir as it is a travel-log. Englishman, Stephen Morris, returns to once again Russia and his Russian wife, and his Russian family, and his Russian children. In an effort to resurrect his connection with his family. He suggests they all go on a family trip together, and bizarrely he takes them to an ex-prison camp, in the White Sea, in the extreme north of Russia. Whereupon his wife and children leave. Stephen Morris then travels Russia, without them, in a kind of unsurprising, kind of normal, well-screw-you-I'll-travel-without-you-anyway.
Stephen Morris's extensive knowledge of the Russian people and culture, he's many Russian friends, his ability to read and speak the language means he does not have a tourist perspective on Russia. He is both apart and detached from it. This gives his memoir a depth of understanding that surpasses other books, for this reason, I am sure it was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature reward.
Stephen Morris's extensive knowledge of the Russian people and culture, he's many Russian friends, his ability to read and speak the language means he does not have a tourist perspective on Russia. He is both apart and detached from it. This gives his memoir a depth of understanding that surpasses other books, for this reason, I am sure it was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature reward.
June 11, 2020
More accurate than any guidebook this travelogue unfolds a relationship with Russia, as uneven and mysterious as any long term intimacy. Morris precisely captures the expectations of travel and the reality of a confrontation with place which lacks grand notions or narrative regularities. Rather, we are introduced to a patchwork of histories, geographic encounters, personal recollections and experiences. Black Tea provokes you to reassess your assumptions about this complex and controversial nation, not to replace them with new ones but to open a window to a view more accurate to the truths of life and history.
October 9, 2020
Black Tea is a love story, a mature story of a middle-aged man looking back at his life and his 25 years of marriage. For whatever reason, the author has a passion for Russia. Unsurprisingly, he marries a russian woman, the beautiful Lyuba. She remains a mystery an enigma, as much for us as she is for her husband. Clearly, she is a methaphor for Russia. As Stephen Morris attempts to understand his marriage and his passion for Russia, we learn about his life. I'm not gonna tell you how this ends because I wouldn't want to spoil it. Will he save his marriage? Will he and Lyuba reconcile? What does he learn in the journey he takes? Overall, a beautiful portrayal of Russia, life and change.
May 12, 2020
I’d recommend this memoir for anyone who is interested in Russia and the history of the Cold War. It reminded me of Laurie Lee’s memoir of the Spanish Civil War in content and style. As much as Black Tea is a commentary on contemporary Russia, it’s a rumination on the nature of change. Change is an immutable fact of human life and central to our concept of time. We desperately try to cling onto a moment or feeling only to have it inevitably slip away. But there’s something beautiful in change that the book describes exquisitely.
August 13, 2025
This is a marvellous and evocative book, one dripping with nostalgia for a lost and unreachable past, both in love and of place. Having travelled through the Soviet Union in the same era as the author I can vouch for its authenticity of detail, political and societal mood, and that strange mysticism native to the Russians, which remains so misunderstood by those in Western Europe.
March 14, 2024
I so enjoyed this travelogue/memoir/anguished love-letter to Russia. It's full to brim of quiet yet pin-sharp observations on the country and on love and life, as he travels both across modern Russia and through the last wash of his marriage. Perfectly observed from start ot finish.
September 29, 2020
Shortlisted for a Royal Society of Literature award, Black Tea unpacks love and commitment, Russia and family, and the lure of the foreign land.
Morris, a London builder, has Russia in his blood. His father is pro Soviet, his grandmother rages against the godless communists, his mother took Russian courses while pregnant, and on his wall was a giant map of Russia. Inevitably it seems he marries a Russian woman and partially raises his half Russian children there. He learns the language, cultural icons and history of the country, becomes friends with Russians who then go through their house in London, and watches Russia transform itself over the decades.
As his marriage stumbles into something confusing and unknown, he decides on a family trip around little known places in Russia. The wife and kids are not enthused and return to the family dacha several weeks in. Undeterred and stubborn, he travels the Caucasus by himself.
His insights into Russia and his interactions with the people are thoughtful and moving, and what I think as the opposite of journalism. They brim with humanity. At the end is a telling incident where he is at a resort in Crimea and he insists on ordering a fish that Englishmen can't eat while having a conversation with a man having a fantasy love affair with an unattainable actress. It so nicely sums up his life that it really stuck in my mind.
I'll leave it to the reader whether or not he reconciles with his wife or not.
Morris, a London builder, has Russia in his blood. His father is pro Soviet, his grandmother rages against the godless communists, his mother took Russian courses while pregnant, and on his wall was a giant map of Russia. Inevitably it seems he marries a Russian woman and partially raises his half Russian children there. He learns the language, cultural icons and history of the country, becomes friends with Russians who then go through their house in London, and watches Russia transform itself over the decades.
As his marriage stumbles into something confusing and unknown, he decides on a family trip around little known places in Russia. The wife and kids are not enthused and return to the family dacha several weeks in. Undeterred and stubborn, he travels the Caucasus by himself.
His insights into Russia and his interactions with the people are thoughtful and moving, and what I think as the opposite of journalism. They brim with humanity. At the end is a telling incident where he is at a resort in Crimea and he insists on ordering a fish that Englishmen can't eat while having a conversation with a man having a fantasy love affair with an unattainable actress. It so nicely sums up his life that it really stuck in my mind.
I'll leave it to the reader whether or not he reconciles with his wife or not.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews