The humble cup of tea is now on the front line of the culture wars
Like many of our great museums and galleries, Tate Britain has been having a bumpy time of late. Its planned rehang, announced in 2018, was interrupted by Covid and will now be unveiled in May. Meanwhile, critics savaged the labelling of the London venue’s Hogarth and Europe exhibition in 2021, citing “the collapse… of useful scholarship and its replacement by wokeish drivel”.
While it remains to be seen which of these qualities will inspire the forthcoming rehang, some intimations are emerging. Among the rehung works is An English Family at Tea (c 1720), a painting by Joseph van Aken, the London-based Flemish artist. A gallery label on the Tate’s website notes that “tea-drinking came to epitomise civilised behaviour in the 18th century”. But an updated label for the rehang reportedly notes that “tea was a bitter drink sweetened with sugar produced in British colonies”.
The historical art aspect is only one element of the culture wars currently raging around our national beverage. Research by the United Kingdom Tea & Infusions Association reveals a decline in biscuitdunking among 18-29 year-olds, who apparently prefer a savoury snack with their cuppa. Some even go so far as to take samosas with a mug of Rosie Lee.
The consequences of this apparently minor shift of mores are not to be underestimated: “Future sales of sweet biscuits are at risk if the younger generation do not establish the hot drink with biscuits habit”, is the dire conclusion of Mintel, a market research company that carried out a similar survey last year.
Such controversies are not new. In 1807, the Rev Sydney Smith, a clergyman and well-known wit of the day, reported: “A dreadful controversy has broken out in Bath, whether tea is most effectually sweetened by lump or pounded sugar; and the worst passions of the human mind are called into action by the pulverists and the lumpists.”
In my own household, a dispute about the merits of biscuit-dunking regularly erupts at teatimes, with my partner immovably in favour (even as half his soggy Hobnob detaches to form a layer of sludge at the bottom of his cup).
My own positions in the various tea controversies are unequivocal: I’m on the side of useful scholarship, lump sugar and anchovy toast, not biscuits, at teatime. And if dunking is set for imminent extinction, so much the better.
Until the advent of computers, an obsession with typefaces was a minority interest. But now we’re all at it, opining knowledgeably about the relative merits of Bell Centennial and Bell Gothic, and sneering at Comic Sans.
Now that modest flourish, the serif, has moved a step closer to being effaced from official communications. Last week, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, reportedly sent a memo to staff with the subject line, “The Times (New Roman) are a-changin’”. From Feb 6, the official font of the State Department is to be the sans serif Calibri. The switch follows decisions by the UK Supreme Court and Home Office to shun serifs in the interests of “accessibility”.
Happily for serif-lovers, the minuscule but strangely endearing flourishes continue to prosper in print media. For those of us interested in such details, the end-matter of books – even everyday paperbacks – often includes an interesting historical note on the typeface. Serif or sans serif: