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The Global History of the British Cup of Tea

BAFTA award winning producer, author, historian and presenter, Professor David Olusoga returns to Exeter Corn Exchange with a brand-new talk for 2026!

In this talk, David Olusoga uses art and photography, history and humour to uncover the strange and unexpected history of our national drink, adding this subject to his previous ever-popular History’s Missing Chapters.

There is nothing more British than a cup of tea. Tea is our national drink and our national obsession. Yet the history of tea is the ultimate global story. It links over 350 years of British history to the histories of China, India, the Caribbean, and the United States. It encompasses the Boston Tea Party, the Opium Wars, and the history of the British East India Company. It is a story that involves industrial espionage and a vast forgotten migration within India, and the creation in Britain of a whole new world of domestic traditions and even new consumer household goods.

David Olusoga has become a household name over the years, more recently interviewing president Barack Obama whilst also reaching the finals of the BBC hit TV series, ‘Celebrity Traitors’. David is has been back on BBC 2 with his brand-new series of ‘Empire’, with a new series of ‘A House Through Time’ scheduled for the Spring.

David is the author or co-author of eight books including Black & British: A Forgotten History (awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize), The World’s War, Black & British: A Short Essential History, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism.

David’s other television programs include ‘Union’ He also writes and presents the long-running BBC history series A House Through Time. Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, and a columnist for The Observer, David also writes for The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Voice and BBC History Magazine.

A recipient of both the British Academy’s President’s Medal and the Norton Medlicott Medal For Services to History David is a Fellow of the British Academy, The Royal Society of Literature, The Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Historical Society.

A Q&A plus book signing will follow the presentation, offering a chance to meet one of the UK’s foremost public historians. Books will be available to purchase at the event.

7.30pm (doors 6.45)