What's English about English Breakfast tea?

Under the heading of "Tea" on our menu, first on the list is English Breakfast.

Despite a few requests for egg, bacon, sausage, and beans, it is generally well-understood that you'll receive a cup of tea. £1.60 would certainly be a bargain fry-up, but with Richmond sausages and stolen pigeon eggs, it'd probably be do-able.

English Breakfast Tea is, in fact, anything but English: Assam, Ceylon, and Kenya are the most common places of origin. As Brits, we're renowned for drinking the stuff, but we're totally incapable of producing it. Same deal with coffee, chocolate, and anything else enjoyable.

The term English Breakfast was coined by Americans way back in colonial times. Whenever that was.

Although we Brits can't take the credit for the name or the cultivation of our popular morning cuppa, we can claim its invention.

In 1869, a tea merchant in New York created a new blend which became our iconic English Breakfast. The tea merchant was an English immigrant named Richard Davies. His blend was copied, improved and sold to the masses.

These days, Richard Davies is almost entirely forgotten, and Mr Tetley, pyramid bags, and a fat bloke with a sock monkey seem more important to us than the origins of our tea blend.

If it's good enough for Her Majesty, it's good enough for us, so we only do Twinings. Royal warrants are so much more appealing than pigs and monkeys. Pigs as in Teapigs; we don't mean Johnny Vegas.