Happy #NationalTeaDay! To celebrate, we're going to share some of our favourite literary facts about tea...

‘Scandal-broth’ and ‘chatter-broth’ were both nineteenth-century slang for tea, as was ‘cat-lap’. ‘Scandal-broth’ features in Sir Walter Scott's Peveril of the Peak (1823) #NationalTeaDay

Samuel Johnson, who defined tea in his 1755 Dictionary as 'A Chinese plant, of which the infusion has lately been much drunk in Europe', was known to drink up to 15 cups of tea in one evening #NationalTeaDay

One of the earliest recorded references to anyone in England having a cup of tea is an entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary on 25 September 1660: 'And afterwards did send for a Cupp of Tee (a China drink of which I never had drank before)' #NationalTeaDay