Great literary tea parties (oh, and ours)

Every summer this magazine invites some of its (randomly selected) subscribers to tea in the garden. Every Englishman loves tea and the pages of English literature are richly adorned with tea-time scenes.

Perhaps the most gluttonous teas are to be found in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. From her exile abroad, the narrator remembers tea-time at Manderley with relish: ‘Those dripping crumpets, I can see them now. Tiny crisp wedges of toast, and piping-hot, flaky scones. Sandwiches of unknown nature, mysteriously flavoured and quite delectable, and that very special gingerbread. Angel cake, that melted in the mouth, and his rather stodgier companion bursting with peel and raisins.’

Tea at Manderley is not only sumptuous, it is unchanging. Served rigidly at half-past four, it is a ‘solemn ritual’, which ‘went forward as it always did, day after day’. When the novel begins, however, we gather that Manderley is resolutely in the past, revisited only in dream and memory, yet still the narrator persists in taking tea in their hotel abroad, where alas it has dwindled to a cup thereof, accompanied by a meagre two slices of bread and butter.