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Nice tea quotation from Orwell

This is from "Down and out in Paris and London" by G. Orwell:

"There were murmurs of agreement. Evidently the tramps were not grateful for their tea. And yet it was excellent tea, as different from coffee-shop tea as good Bordeaux is from the muck called colonial claret, and we were all glad of it. I am sure too that it was given in a good spirit, without any intention of humiliating us; so in fairness we ought to have been grateful--still, we were not."

This is a passage on how he and other tramps had to pray for half an hour in a mission in order to get a free cup of tea and two buns. Orwell also wrote an essay on tea brewing, although I don't agree with some of his ideas there.

Reply to
andrei.avk
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That's a strange book. I bounces between sharp observation and blind prejudice.

Right. When he grew up, his politics improved but his tea aesthetic turned Colonel-Blimpish.

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

Indeed, there was a funny stab at armenians, 'trust a snake before trusting a jew, trust a jew before you trust a greek, but never trust an armenian.'

Well, I think the only good tea available at the time was the type of english breakfast or irish breakfast blends, so he couldn't say much about other varieties, but his advice on these strong english teas was more or less spot on. He mentions that chinese teas are not very good, but I think he meant green teas and the ones that he could get were likely low grade and stale..

Reply to
andrei.avk

I don't think a lot has changed since Orwell wrote. As a matter of fact I fear that the quality of tea, for the majority of people, has gone down and that includes green teas. The tea bag did not do any favours to quality.

JB

Reply to
JB

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