The influential British food journalist Dorthy Hartley lamented in her 1933 ode to rustic English specialties that her country had lost so many of its great regional cheeses. Little did she know, British cheese would soon undergo a revival, a "gastronomic miracle" that came about after World War II, and has continued to flower ever since. Bee Wilson's description of the current state of British cheese would certainly make Hartley (and any cheese-loving compatriot) proud.

"When East Anglia was a golden land of wheat, a saffron cheese was made, so that on the East you ate white bread and golden cheese; and on the West, in Devon and Cornwall, golden saffron bread and white cream cheese." So wrote Dorothy Hartley in 1933.

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Photo by Phillip Capper