ONE of the country’s leading public historians, Professor David Olusoga brings his wit and academic rigour to that most British of traditions, a cup of tea. He comes to Bridport’s Electric Palace on Saturday 10th October, at 7.30pm, to talk about his new book, The Global History of the British Cup of Tea.

The BAFTA-award-winning producer, author, historian and presenter uses art and photography, history and humour to uncover the strange and unexpected history of our national drink, adding this subject to his previous popular History’s Missing Chapters.

There is nothing more British than a cup of tea. Tea is a national obsession. Yet the history of tea is the ultimate global story. It links more than 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. His other television programmes include Union. He has been back on BBC 2 with the Empire series, and most recently a new series of A House Through Time.

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, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism.

He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, a columnist for The Observer, and 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.