The Essay: The Lost Hours

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The Essay: The Lost Hours: Afternoon Tea

Afternoon Tea

The Lost Hours

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Lost Hours, Afternoon Tea

Novelist Andrew Martin considers the whys and wherefores of a much-loved ritual, tea-time.

Afternoon tea and its many guises come under scrutiny in Andrew Martin’s third exploration of the endangered rituals that punctuate our days.

Afternoon Tea has predominantly been seen as the preserve of women, and has sometimes suffered from stigmatisation as a frivolous, unnecessary hiatus in the day. But is this delightful ritual in decline because more women work these days ponders Martin, and what of the fraught class tangle of low tea versus high tea? The former, in fact, being posher than the latter – who knew? Martin uncovers all, by way of outings to the Ritz, the Waldorf, and of course Bettys Café in York.

The Lost Hours is a series of essays about how the day used not to be so monolithic; about how it was punctuated by rituals that lent a character to different hours. All the rituals described seem to be in decline, but none can be written off completely. And, a cheering thought, perhaps some will revive post-Covid as we rediscover the social possibilities of our days. They reflect a way of life both more leisured and more regimented, and one of their virtues might be that as well as enriching our days they actually slow them down too, and paradoxically give us more time.


Written and read by Andrew Martin
Produced by Karen Holden

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Andrew Martin muses on how the day used to be punctuated by rituals, now almost lost.

Writer Andrew Martin muses on how the day used to be punctuated by rituals that lent a character to different hours, rituals now almost lost... but perhaps not quite.

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