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Tea: A History of the Drink That Changed the World by John Griffiths

martialia's review

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4.0

"There were 24 tea cars on the beach at Dunkirk and all were destroyed by enemy fire or abandoned. Their crews were lucky to get back whole to England, but no sooner had they done so then they joined their colleagues dispensing tea to the thousands of exhausted troops of the evacuation. In the course of those next few days the Tea Cars served some five thousand gallons of tea."
I believe in the sense of security and ability to be brave in the face of horrors that a simple comfort can rouse in us humans. I'm convinced now that the war was won by the powers of tea.
Combine this with use of the word flibbertigibbet, and a passage on the use of bitter tea & centipedes as an ulcer cure and I am well pleased with this volume. It's not for the simply curious though, there's some slogging through dry economic details as well.
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