fig. 6 - Milk and sugar can now be added. Note that some practitioners of the English Tea Ceremony choose to pour the milk into the "mug" before pouring in the water. The Great Milk Debate has been raging for centuries and shows no signs of abating. In fact, a dispute between the House of Tudor and the House of Stuart over whether to add the milk first or last was a major cause of the famous "War of the Roses". Under King Henry VIII, adding the milk last was outlawed as heresy, punishable by burning at the stake, and for many years the oldest and wisest of Britain's tea masters were forced to practice their forbidden art in secret.
Nowadays of course British society is a lot more tolerant of such cultural diversity, but even so the debate still permeates every level of government. Recently, Prime Minister Tony Blair was forced to eject the Honourable Ken Livingstone MP from the Labour Party, under what he cited as "unsolvable milk differences".