Jezebel contributor Jenna Sauers deflates the “rah-rah Rule Britannia stuff” of the Adams, Orwell, and Hitchens essays, strips out the ceremony, and explains the essentials of making tea:
The main thing — and the most obvious area of commonality between Hitchens, Orwell, and Adams — is that everything used in the making of tea must be very hot. All the warming and boiling and swishing of hot water can be made to sound complicated, but it’s actually operating on a very simple principal: Because the hottest brew is the most flavorful tea, the entire tea-making process is about taking the hottest possible elements, mixing them together in the hottest possible environment, and then preserving as much of that heat as possible as they infuse.