Dainty Decadence

Is there anything more quintessentially British than a posh-nosh high tea? But as Lynda Hallinan reveals, its origins lie with the hoi polloi rather than the hoity-toity.

- Lynda Hallinan

When Prince William married Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in 2011, I threw a party. A gaggle of gal-pals and I gathered to ogle at Pippa Middleton’s impossibly perky derrière, admire Kate’s lovely lace bodice work and play “guess every bloom” in her elegant, understated bouquet. (For the record, she carried sprigs of lily-of-the-valley, sweet William, hyacinths, ivy and myrtle, which, in the Victorian language of flowers, respectively stand for happiness, gallantry, constancy, fidelity and enduring love.) 

By the time the newly-wed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge shared their first kiss on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, we’d downed too many mojito mocktails and eaten our fill of vanilla cupcakes with pale-blue buttercream icing, for the royal wedding just happened to coincide with my eldest son’s baby shower. 

This month, when Prince Harry marries his American actress sweetheart Meghan Markle, we’ll do it all again, only this time I’ll serve a quintessentially English three-tiered high tea and, because I’m not up the duff, we’ll wash it down with pretty pink Champagne punch infused with elderflower and apple tea.  

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a special occasion – an engagement, anniversary, birthday, Mother’s Day or simply a girls’ day out – than with fine bone china, floral tablecloths, embroidered napkins and a towering selection of scrumptious bite sized treats that invariably favours sweet over savoury.