The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum, by Ron Benrey
My wife, Janet, and I write cozy mysteries—a genre that has a unique requirement when it comes to setting: Broadly speaking, readers expect the setting to be a character in its own right—unusual, interesting, and playing a central role in the story. Our “Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries” are set in the fictional Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum—although we’ve spent so much time writing about the institution that think of it as real. We see it as one of the most popular tourist attractions in the South of England, and also a world center of scholarship about tea history, tea chemistry, and tea tasting. The Museum was established in 1964 to honor Commodore Desmond Hawker, a 19th Century Master of the China Tea Trade. The institution is really a combination art and natural history museum dedicated to the art, geography, botany, and manufacturing related to Britain’s tea trade and its love affair with tea. The Tea Museum is housed in an impressive, four-story Georgian-style b...