Tea and bikkies

The great British love affair with afternoon tea is honoured in the world's first gallery devoted to the humble biscuit. The display in Reading, Berkshire, includes a cookie salvaged from a house bombed in the Second World War and a biscuit taken by British explorer Captain Robert Scott on his ill-fated trek to the Antarctic in 1911.

Reading's former biscuit-makers, Huntley and Palmer, in their heyday dispatched biscuits to all corners of the globe, boxed in tins.

In the pioneering days of rail travel, tins of biscuits were ideal food for the journey. Tins shaped as books, a garden turf roller, a globe and a camera are among the flamboyant designs favoured in the early 1900s.