Where would we be without Rosie Lea?

in irony. Those plump lips forever poised for whistling, talking, or kissing. It was a look of complete self-possession, or “stonecrushing confidence” as one critic put it.

Last week Bacall seduced us once more, gazing up at us from newspaper obituaries, online galleries, and Twitter feeds as the world mourned the passing of a legend. Sultry and sardonic, cool and courageous, tough and tender, the look seemed oddly out of place in a 21st century obsessed with youth over experience and sanitisation over female sexuality. How often do we encounter such an expression on the smooth and startled faces of our own Hollywood actresses? How many memorable lines delivered by the leading ladies of today can we recite off the top of our heads?

The irony is that Bacall’s look and voice were makebelieve. This was Hollywood’s Golden Age after all: rigorously glamorous, meticulously constructed.

Yet it was the most ruthlessly policed cinematic period that would bring about its greatest flowering of complex Hollywood actresses: sirens who could talk smart and sexy, take risks, and wear trousers. Bacall was only 19 when she walked on the set of her first film, Howard Hawks’ ToHaveOr HaveNot and behind the mask of assertiveness, she was young, inexperienced, and terrified.

“My hand was shaking, my head was shaking, the cigarette was shaking, I was mortified,” she wrote years later in her autobiography ByMyself. “…I realised that one way to hold my trembling head still was to keep it down, chin low, almost to my chest, and eyes up at Bogart. It worked and turned out to be the beginning of The Look.”

As for her trademark husky voice, the Jewish girl from The Bronx who started out as Betty Joan Perske was instructed to deepen it by Hawks. He told her to drive into the hills during filming and read aloud for long periods until she went hoarse. That and the constant smoking meant her voice, as much as her beauty, became her calling card.

I think I’ve damn well earned the right to be judged on my own and thought of as me

Many have claimed that Bacall’s death marks the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age. To which you might say, what, the era of the exploitative studio system, the casting couch, and all those “genius” directors who tortured their leading ladies in the name of extracting Oscarworthy performances from them? Good riddance. Or calm down, what about the fact that Doris Day is still alive and well and taking stray animals in at her Californian ranch?

On the other hand, they just don’t make ‘em like Bacall any more. On Twitter people were quick to point out that of the 16 icons striking a pose in Madonna’s Vogue, Bacall was the last to give “good face”. And how many of the current crop of Hollywood stars can expect a paid obit in the NewYork Times by the Leonard Bernstein family (Bacall’s Manhattan neighbours) stating that “her appearance at the back door... was always a welcome delight – even if she was complaining about the piano noise”.

There was something irreducible about Bacall, quite apart from the construct. Katharine Hepburn had the wit, Ava Gardner the beauty, Vivien Leigh the edge, Marilyn Monroe the vulnerability, and Grace Kelly the class, but it was never so easy to characterise Bacall. She was too human, too funny, too sexy, too frank, too unconventionally beautiful for that. And though Bogie and Bacall were one of the great Hollywood couples, she was too singular to be defined even by that. “I think I’ve damn well earned the right to be judged on my own,” she said in a 1970 interview. “It’s time I was allowed a life of my own, to be judged and thought of… as me.”

She was impossible to pin down, which is perhaps why she never recaptured the early success of ToHaveOrHave Not and TheBigSleep. The war ended and with it women’s temporary freedoms. The prim and proper Fifties arrived and Bacall, with her tough talk and simmering sexuality, had no place in them. Besides, she chose love over her career, refusing to be moulded by Hawks and marrying Bogart instead. A typically Fifties decision, you might argue, choosing to be the wife and mother, but she never regretted it.

What really made Bacall the last of a dying breed was the way she managed her beauty. She never denied it, allowed it to hold her back, or permitted anyone to change it. Which in Hollywood then and now is nothing short of radical.

She had a strong face that studio bosses felt needed taming. They wanted her brows plucked, her teeth straightened, and her hairline shaved. She resisted all of it. And then, most remarkably of all, slowly and openly, she got older.

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that,” she famously said. And so she wore her hair white and long. She always looked at ease in her body. The story of her remarkable life became etched on her face in deep lines. She played imperious matriarchs ( Birth, Lars von Trier’s Dogville), Washington grand dames ( The Walker), and Barbra Streisand’s mother ( TheMirrorHasTwo Faces) and actually looked the part. She continued to be sexy, strong, and cool into her eighties. And always, she continued to own The Look.

IDON’T know about you, but to me a cup of tea means builders’ tea. A good old mug of Tetley’s, or Scottish Blend, preferably with a small spoonful of sugar and a bit of milk.

Trendy alternatives such as peppermint, or a rhubarb rooibos, are not tea. They might be pleasant enough drinks but there should be a Trade Descriptions Act prohibiting them from sharing the same name as a good old cup of Rosie Lea.

I have a friend – a yoga teacher and a lapsed vegetarian – who doesn’t ever consume caffeine except on special occasions, when the effects are entertaining to say the very least.

On a recent visit to her house, she offered me a cup of tea. “Oooh yes, lovely,” I said, in that British way we have of seemingly getting excited about the most mundane of drinks. “Milk and some sugar if you’ve got some please, but really don’t worry if you haven’t.”

I have recently learned to accept that my liking for a small teaspoon of sugar in my cuppa is these days regarded as an unfashionable habit by many, who look at me as if they’ve just discovered a dinosaur fossil.

They then spend the next half hour poking reluctantly about their cupboards in search of “that sugar that the builders left when they did the kitchen”.

My friend was confused. “I don’t think any of the tea I’ve got would really taste right with milk,” she said.

“Then it’s not tea, is it?!” I wanted to scream.

But I didn’t. I politely accepted a cup of apple and ginger flavoured hot water and drank it like a good girl.

A report out this week from that most British of brands, Churchill – you can imagine the sagely nodding northern dog is a fan of a good brew – found that the concept of the afternoon tea is on the up.

The study, released as the nation celebrates Afternoon Tea Week, found that three in five young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 have recently gone for, or are planning to go for afternoon tea, while the older generation surprisingly aren’t quite such fans, with only 44 per cent of adults over the age of 55 saying they had planned a recent afternoon tea excursion.

The report found the British have spent £567 million in the past five years on tea-making paraphenalia such as teapots and posh china cups with garden roses painted on them.

While you could – if you really wanted to – drink the perfumed water of fruit and herbal teas in these, it is a truth not worth debating that the decadence of afternoon tea goes best with a breakfast tea; or perhaps a nice Earl Grey – or even a good old smoky lapsang souchong if you’re feeling fancy.

The Great British Bake Off, which can be credited with fuelling the national interest in mini cakes and fancies (all evenly baked, of course, with no soggy bottoms), embodies the very ethos of a proper cup of tea.

You can’t imagine Mary Berry supping a nettle and roseleaf infusion, can you?

But in other countries, the beverage we see as our national drink has other properties.

The Japanese regard tea drinking as a ritualistic ceremony – more revered for the customs surrounding it than the drink itself.

In Romania, tea is considered a cure-all for any ailment. Think you might have a stomach ulcer? Your doctor may well prescribe camomile tea, in huge quantities.

In China, similar. A large part of Chinese medicine depends on being able to consume the herbs by boiling them up in hot water and drinking them. Some may be black teas, but they are not usually consumed with milk.

On reflection, it may well be us who are out of step – the rest of the world does not consider what we call tea to be tea.

We need a new name for it.

Perhaps “tea tea” would be a good option. It would underline the superiority of the drink over the watery cups of nothing masquerading as a proper cuppa. I’m off to make myself a nice cup of tea tea and add plenty of milk and sugar. I might even drink it out of a china cup. And there won’t be an infusion or herb in sight.