Talks take place on Thursday afternoons, starting at 2pm, and usually take place in the Lecture Hall, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA. These are free for Oxford u3a members but you are welcome to attend as a guest for a donation of £5 (£2 for members of all other U3As).
Most talks are recorded on Zoom for the benefit of those Oxford u3a members who are unable to attend Rewley House.
In the event of adverse weather conditions, please telephone Rewley House (01865 270360), to enquire whether the talk has been cancelled.
Melanie King – Tea, Coffee and Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine
13th May 2027 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Melanie King is a social historian, speaker, and the author of eight books exploring subjects ranging from 18th-century health cures to espionage. She is
also the founder of The History Forum, a popular online lecture series
featuring history professionals, running annually from September to May.
Melanie holds a degree in International Relations from the University of
Sussex and has lived and worked across the globe. Her varied career includes
roles at The Nation newspaper in Bangkok, the EU in Brussels, Chatham
House in London, and work with refugees in Thailand and the UK. Before
becoming a full-time writer and speaker in 2004, she also served as a
university careers adviser.
An enthusiastic and widely travelled speaker, Melanie is committed to making
history unforgettable – she promises every talk or book includes at least one
‘strange but true’ fact that audiences will always remember
Did you know that three of our favourite beverages—tea, coffee, and
chocolate—once stirred immense anxiety among the population when they
were first introduced to England in the seventeenth century? At the time, some
claimed that drinking tea led to suicide, that coffee diminished men’s
‘ammunition,’ and that chocolate was such a ‘violent inflamer of the passions’
that monks should be banned from consuming it.
Over three hundred years later, these remarkable beverages, originally from
China, Yemen, and Mesoamerica respectively, have become deeply woven
into Western culture. Besides being enthusiastically consumed by millions,
they appear prominently in operas, ballets, movies, books, poems, paintings,
plays, and songs. New ways to enjoy them continue to be invented.
Join Melanie King as she explores how and why these three beverages, at first
so controversial, became staples of the British diet.