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

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We sat down to chat about the book and Our Isles, the platform he founded to celebrate the rural environment and the British Isles through food, nature, history and heritage. This is a beautiful book celebrating iconic British cheesemakers that transports you across the British Isles with stunning photography and stories of culture, history and families. 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. The farmhouse cheesemakers I have visited work to the highest levels of animal welfare, and many are looking to become more sustainable with what they are putting onto the land and feeding their animals for the best possible milk for cheesemaking. 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.

Angus D Birditt is a young Author, Photographar and advocate for the thriving traditions of rural life, farming and Cheesemaking in the British Isles. Overall, "A Portrait of British Cheese" is an essential read for anyone wanting to dive deeper into the world of traditional British Cheese. Cheese, perhaps more so than any other food product, can help us understand the magnitude of love and labour that goes into making the food that we eat.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. Angus Birditt's beautiful book is a celebration of artisan and farmhouses cheeses of the British Isles. Angus’s authenticity, his passion for sustainable food and his respect for the people behind the products shine through. And each aspect (soil/land, pasture/feed, animal, milk quality, maker) is so variable, which makes cheese such a diverse and fascinating product. Angus is an advocate for the rural environment, celebrating and encouraging its appreciation through his various works.

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. We hosted monthly supper clubs, often cooking 5 different courses each evening to celebrate the wonderful, regional food and drink we have in the British Isles. Birditt has been visiting and documenting dairies all over the British Isles, looking at the food, people and landscapes dedicated to artisan and farmhouse cheeses.Over time, I had created a treasure trove of words and photographs (by this point I had found a camera to snap away with! With A Portrait of British Cheese, I wanted to celebrate the excellence of cheese in the British Isles. 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. The following words extracted from longer poems and accompanying photography attempt to capture the immense beauty, fragility and mysteriousness of our Isles.