Project blog
Tea in Eighteenth-Century Britain is a collaborative research project that draws on the work of researchers in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. We became interested in tea and its history through our research into British literature and culture of the eighteenth century. We have an ongoing programme of research and publication (see Publications), and we are interested in all aspects of the British experience of tea throughout the long eighteenth century.
‘Milk in First’: a miffy question.
11 May 2017
The question of when to add milk to tea is a delicate one in British tea customs. Do you add the ‘milk in first’, pouring the tea on top of it, or do you pour the tea in...
15 April 2017
It has been a troubling month for tea aficionados. First, David Tennant – in his role as DI Hardy in the acclaimed ITV Drama ‘Broadchurch’ – was shown preparing...
Notes towards the Cultural History of Bohea
12 July 2016
Tea first became known in Britain in the mid seventeenth century. For the next five decades or so, British knowledge about tea was scanty. All tea was simply ‘tea’. When...
Enfield or Uppsala? The First Tea-Tree in Europe
10 May 2016
In chapter five of Empire of Tea, I wrote about the ways in which tea was understood and instrumented within British scientific culture during the eighteenth century: botanically, medically,...