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

"I dismissed this book initially because there are a lot of beautiful books on cheese at the moment and I thought, ‘Do we really need another one?’ But this is where the Fortnum’s award works really well because Jimi Famurewa and Tim Hayward, two of my fellow judges, had longlisted it and pored over it. When they presented it to me, I was persuaded. It’s a very charming portrait of the British cheese scene, which is the best it’s ever been. It’s extraordinary. The portraits are beautiful. He really tells a story through his imagery. The photography is amazing. He writes through photos as much as he writes with words. He is an incredibly accomplished photographer. The book has been thoroughly researched. He’s gone around the country with his camera slung over his shoulder and captured dozens, if not hundreds, of these cheeses and the people who make them and told their story. It must have taken a phenomenal amount of work. When it comes to the loose criteria I was talking about at the beginning—‘What has the author set out to do and have they done it and done it well?’—it absolutely fits and ticks those boxes with aplomb. I’m just looking at my bookshelf. Ned Palmer won the Fortnum & Mason food award with his A Cheesemonger’s History of The British Isles . I thought that was the definitive book, written by someone very knowledgeable, but I’ve been proved wrong. Of course you can have more than one book about British cheese, and Ned’s book is very different. It’s not a photography book. Yes, you’re not going to take it on holiday. There have never been so many varieties. There’s a real resurgence in traditional methods of making cheese. So even if it’s a familiar cheese, there are people who are going back to pre-industrial methods of making it, using starter cultures they’ve made themselves. They’re sourcing the milk either from local farms or from their own farm and it’s not pasteurized. It’s about going back to the craft of cheesemaking. So, we now have Cheddars, Cheshires and Stiltons that taste like they would have in the 19th century. Then there are all sorts of new cheeses coming along as well. They’re either inspired by French cheeses or just their own creation entirely."