All Cheeses Great Small

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. 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. ‘I was hanging around the pigsty in the way I’d previously hung around at The Groucho Club. I felt wonderfully connected, grounded in the real world, standing in pig muck’ Following fifteen years in Blur, Alex James did two wild, unexpected things. He fell in love and he bought a farm. Moving into a rambling, chaotic farmstead in the beautiful Cotswold countryside, he decides the best way to learn about farming is the same way he learned most about music: by jumping in and doing it. As his family settles in, he discovers the unexpected joys that country life abounds in: finding the first egg from your very own chicken, coming across a bramble bush laden with blackberries, roasting home-grown pears on an open fire, before stumbling on a new venture – making cheese. Wonderfully warm, witty and perfectly observed, this is the story of what to do after you’ve been the bass player in one of the best bands in the world, and a life-affirming tale of just how much fun growing up and settling down can be. ‘A joy to read. Prose flows and weaves and curls itself into pleasing rhythms…He can write like a god.’ SPECTATOR

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.