If you've been reading my blog, you'll know that I've started having tea on Sundays -- not at the traditional 4 pm hour, but about noon, because on weekends and any other non-work days, I like to eat dinner early. I was inspired to address the question of how this traditional began in the first place. Having tea in pretty china had been popular with the aristocratic and high-society English since Georgian times; it was a way to show off your expensive porcelain (which became known as "china", since that's often where it was made). The woman who is credited with starting the 4 pm afternoon tea ritual was Anna Maria Russell, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, around 1840. To explain why, we have to look at the history of mealtimes in Britain and their evolution to what we're familiar with now. Today, most people in the developed world are used to three meals a day: breakfast, eaten in the morning; lunch, eaten around noon, an...