The British are interesting people.

They drive on the left while all their European neighbors drive on the right. They use inches and feet and not centimeters or meters and most of all they drink tea with milk!

The Italians, Spanish, French all drink tea without milk and are close neighbors, as does most of the world. But no, not the British who love to drink their tea with milk.

Why? What is the reason for this.

There does not seem to be a clear answer but different theories.  Others however claim that it is do with the fact that the tea which was first imported in to Britain could be bitter without adding some milk to make it easier to drink and that from then on the British have always poured milk in to their tea.

Some say that the British ruled India for a few centuries and to this day in the countries of the sub-continent such as India and Bangladesh tea is drunk with milk and the British were influenced by south Asian people.

However, tea itself appears like it may have originated from another part of Asia, from east Asia or to be precise China. While the British have been drinking tea for several centuries, the Chinese have been drinking tea for at least two millennia at least. It spread from China to Europe by the Dutch who brought it back to the Netherlands and from there it became popular in neighboring countries including of course Britain.

However one lady in particular made tea popular in Britain and that was Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II who grew up in Portugal where tea was popular and made it fashionable to drink tea in London, then it spread to the rest of Britain where today millions and millions of cups of tea - with milk - are drunk by millions of Britons!