Meet your guide, bestselling historian Dr Matthew Green, by the steps of St Michael's Church, Cornhill, as ancient bells chime and the aroma of coffee fills the air.
Plunge into the City's tagliatelle of twisting, winding streets & alleys in search of Britain's oldest coffeehouse, marked by a gleaming blue plaque. Hear the story of Pasqua Rosée, a Greek entrepreneur with a colourful turban, twirly moustache & preposterous accent, who brought coffee to these isles in 1652.
Drink Pasqua's coffee on the exact spot, and exactly as it would have tasted, in the 17th century, brewed "black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love". Learn its original names: "bitter Muhammedan gruel", "politicians' porridge", and, because women thought it made men effeminate, "the soot-coloured ninny broth".
Discover why something that tasted so odd became so phenomenally popular. Before the arrival of coffee, most people in London were either slightly or very drunk all day long because you couldn't drink the river-water.
The arrival of coffee would trigger a dawn of sobriety, as people thought clearly for the first time in their history, laying the foundations for spectacular economic growth & social advancement, and indeed democracy itself, in the decades that followed.
Down a dark alleyway, Dr Green will reveal a surviving coffeehouse, almost 400 years old. Stare through its dusty windows and admire the long, wooden tables, uneven wooden floor, bubbling coffee cauldron & flickering candles.
Discover how coffeehouses resisted King Charles II, who considered them bastions of fake news, and women, who vilified "the excessive use of that newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor, coffee", until there were 3,000 by 1700.
Feel yourself engulfed in smoke, sweat & steam; see rows of people sat around communal wooden tables, hear the greeting cry of "Your Servant Sir, What News?", and discover that you could talk to anyone — regardless of class — about the latest news, and discuss politics, philosophy & literature late into the night.
In Exchange Alley, beneath 300-year-old shop signs, enter Exchange Alley and visit three of the most famous coffeehouses: Lloyd's, where the insurance industry was born; Garraway's, home to candlelit auctions, and Jonathan's, birthplace of the stock exchange. Without these, no British empire, no capitalism.
Hear the stories of the Grecian, where Isaac Newton dissected dolphins, Button's, where the greatest writers assembled each night, Smith's, where the first daily newspaper was compiled, and the Latin where you were thrown out if you didn't speak in perfect Latin (it went bust after 2 weeks).
Trace the path of a buried river to Walbrook, where Pasqua once lived, and see a Starbucks growing out of a magnificent Wren church.
Consider the future of London's coffee culture and feel a tinge of nostalgia for the city's original coffeehouses which thrived on the spark of human contact in an increasingly virtual world.
