A Portrait of British Cheese: A Celebration of Artistry, Regionality and Recipes

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Two cheesemakers who exemplifies this are Patrick and Becky Holden from Holden Farm Dairy in West Wales, who make Hafod cheese, a Welsh Cheddar. Angus has captured it all so beautifully in his photos and words and Lilly’s illustrations are perfect as always.

Angus D Birditt is a young Author, Photographar and advocate for the thriving traditions of rural life, farming and Cheesemaking in the British Isles.The following words extracted from longer poems and accompanying photography attempt to capture the immense beauty, fragility and mysteriousness of our Isles. Birditt, the book takes readers on a journey through the stories, people, and landscapes dedicated to artisan and farmhouse cheeses. It is one of those rare food products can be spoken about in the same sentence as terroir – loosely defined as ‘evoking the character of the land’ or more broadly, the ecosystem.

However, as much as I moan about the production side of things, it opened up a world of food and drink as we visited local farmers markets and national food festivals selling our products. The book is rich with information and stunning photography, making it a beautiful addition to any coffee table.It makes you truly admire the hard work of the cheese makers, appreciate the animals and reflect on where the food we eat comes from.

The specific ecosystem and microbiome in the maturation process also affects the flavour of the cheeses, the microbiome being, again, like every aspect of the cheesemaking process, utterly fascinating. Ultimately, Our Isles is a platform to explore and appreciate subjects like artisan and regional food, nature, rural history and heritage. According to the cheesemaker’s preferences, aspects such as humidity, salinity, airflow and temperature are controlled to mature their cheese. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I have always lived in the countryside, either in rural Cambridgeshire throughout my childhood, surrounded by arable fields and mixed woodlands, or in North Wales after university, where I really started to take foraging seriously and experience new landscapes and wildlife.

Through a selection of thirty cheesemakers and their cheeses, I hope to show how British artisan cheese is profoundly connected to the land, farm animals and people involved in making it. The UK farmhouse cheese industry has faced its biggest challenges in recent years, with the Covid-19 pandemic forcing many small cheesemakers out of business. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The book shines a light on the industry’s rich heritage, community and, above all, its cheesemakers, looking at how, through a mixture of knowledge and intuition, science and artistry, they create their cheese.

What I found fascinating about artisan cheese is how many different varieties you can have from the same initial product, milk (which, of course, is so complex in itself). but with nowhere to house it all, so that’s when I decided to found Our Isles, a place for all of my work to come together. Through interviews, stories, recipes and photography, the book celebrates how British cheese is profoundly connected to the land, farm animals and people involved in making it. Darker than' is Tanmay's collection of handmade clothes inspired by his response to the changing landscape and light of Seven Sisters in East Sussex.For the making side of cheese, timings, temperatures, length of making, milk handling, weather conditions, among many more variables, all affect the make. Factors like the health of the soil and the welfare and diet of the animals are things to consider in this case. From Suffolk’s Baron Bigod to Brefu Bach sheep's milk cheese from Snowdonia, Birditt’s delicious volume guides the reader though the story of British cheese through essays, photos and irresistible recipes.