March 2009

Another one to please my mother.

This brisk little study gives a compelling sketch of the world of globalisation before the age of instant information, and transforms a modest Scottish botanist into a swashbuckling pirate capitalist, who incidentally changed the way we all have breakfast.

A girl could get used to this.

Surely those old tea parlours should have displayed a picture of The Saviour of The Cuppa next to portraits of Churchill and the Queen

I’m starting to enjoy this.

Concealed in the murky depths of your cuppa is nothing less than a crucial phase in the rise of the British Empire. If the secret of producing tea could be wrested from the grip of the Chinese Emperor, and the plant itself transplanted to the foothills of the Himalayas in the British Raj, vast revenues would follow and British imperial dominance in the Far East would be incontestable. Enter Robert Fortune, botanist and plant-hunter extraordinaire – as diligent, daring and enterprising a Victorian hero as one could wish for.

Sarah Rose tells a stirring tale of individual derring-do and the fate of nations.

They love me. They love me slightly less. The FT so totally loves me.

Tea is ingrained in the British psyche but the story benefits from an American author for whom the subject is almost exotic. An enthusiastic tale of how the humble leaf became a global addiction.

This warms an author’s heart.

The great tea robbery: How our cuppa wouldn’t exist if an amazing Victorian hadn’t stolen the secret from China’s warlords.