Book description
This is the story of Alex James's transition from a leading light of
the Britpop movement in the 1990s, to gentleman farmer, artisan
cheese-maker and father of five.
All Cheeses Great and Small is the follow-up memoir to Alex James's
first book, Bit of a Blur, the story of his excessive pop star lifestyle
during the nineties. But now Alex has grown up, fallen in love and got
married. He has also fallen passionately for his new home, an enormous
rambling farmhouse in the Cotswolds, set in two hundred acres of
beautiful British countryside.
The farm represents not just a new house for Alex, but also a new
career. As he breathes new life into the old farm he chances across an
unexpected calling: making cheese. His cheeses, Blue Monday, Farleigh
Wallop and Little Wallop have received widespread media interest and are
now sold through many outlets.
The story culminates with an account of the triumphant reformation of
Blur for Glastonbury 2009. 'James's prose is clean and poetic. His
childlike wonder at the simple things - from herons to heaps of rubble -
can be infectious'. Daily Telegraph
'A joy to read. Prose flows and weaves and curls itself into pleasing
rhythms…(Alex James) can write like a god.' Spectator
'The upbeat tone matches that of his Blur-era autobiography A Bit Of A
Blur, treating his downsize from rock heart-throb to cockerel-throttling
country gent as if cheese contests were Britpop orgies. Riding bikes,
the smell of berry bushes, piles of cow dung: all brilliant' NME
Writer, musician and cheesemaker Alex James is bestknown as the bass
player in Blur, a time he chronicled in his acclaimed first book Bit of
a Blur.
Alex James lives on a farm in Oxfordshire with his wife and five
children. He writes a weekly column on all things food for the Sun, as
well a regular column on farm and family life for the Sunday Telegraph.
