If tea, as George Orwell once wrote, is the mainstay of civilisation in Britain, our country must be becoming a less civilised place. Sales of the drink have plummeted over the past five years, and the reason, at least in part, is that we are eating fewer biscuits.
As a nation we are consuming 21 million kilograms less tea than in 2010, with sales falling by a fifth. It is the traditional cuppa that is in greatest decline, with sales of “builder’s tea” down 13 per cent in the past two years alone.
What we are losing in civilisation, we may be gaining in sophistication. Over the same period, sales of herb and fruit teas have risen by a third. Green tea has done even