Alan Macfarlane is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He is the world's foremost expert on tea and its social impact and has been the principle social expert on the acclaimed Channel Four series The Day the World Took Off.

Iris Macfarlane is Alan's mother and was for many years married to a tea-planter in Assam. She wrote for History Today in the 1960s and has published many books most notable her translations of Assamese and Gaelic folk stories. In the early 1990s Iris appeared extensively on the BBC British Empire series Ruling Passions.