Alice Loxton

shop which I bought a few years ago and I'll have I'd say a dash of milk semi-skim milk and it normally ends up being the colour of a digestive biscuit so I'm very particular about that but if I get it right it does set me up for a perfect day what about you how much milk do you have

A fellow tea obsessive.

I love it.

Your mother and I would get on, no doubt.

I know.

People have such strong feelings about it, myself included.

And perhaps you deserve that contempt.

But it is a big part of the British identity.

And actually, the anthropologist Kate Fox has written about this in her book, Watching the English.

She said that whenever the English feel awkward or uncomfortable in a social situation, that is almost all the time, they make tea.

So totally relatable.

Right, yeah.

I am feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

About my company.

But the question is, why is tea so important?

Did you know, this is an amazing fact, next to water, it's the most consumed beverage in the world.

So there's a lot of tea drinkers, there's a lot of us out there.

But what about in Britain?

How did something not native to Britain become intrinsically linked to British identity?

Chapter one, Royal Tea.