A Social History of Tea
A cup of tea is a vital part of everyday life for the majority of people in modern Britain - in fact tea is so integral to our routine, that it is difficult to imagine life without it! But it was not always so; tea was once a luxury product that only the rich could afford, and at one time there was even a debate about whether it might be bad for the health. It was over the course of several hundred years that tea gained its place as our national drink, and only relatively recently that its health-giving properties have been recognised.Tea first became established in Britain because of the influence of a foreign princess, Catherine of Braganza, the queen of Charles II. A lover of tea since her childhood in Portugal, she brought tea-drinking to the English royal court, and set a trend for the beverage among the aristocracy of England in the seventeenth century.
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