About this item
If ever there was a book to read in the company of a nice cuppa, this is it. -The Washington Post In the dramatic story of one of the greatest acts of corporate espionage ever committed, Sarah Rose recounts the fascinating, unlikely circumstances surrounding a turning point in economic history. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the British East India Company faced the loss of its monopoly on the fantastically lucrative tea trade with China, forcing it to make the drastic decision of sending Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to steal the crop from deep within China and bring it back to British plantations in India. Fortunes danger-filled odyssey, magnificently recounted here, reads like adventure fiction, revealing a long-forgotten chapter of the past and the wondrous origins of a seemingly ordinary beverage.
About the Author
Sarah Rose is the author of D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II, and For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History.She was the Dynasties columnist at the Wall Street Journal, and her features have appeared in Outside, Departures, The New York Post, Travel Leisure, Bon Appetit, The Saturday Evening Post, and Men's Journal. In 2014, she was awarded a Lowell Thomas Prize in Travel Writing.
