Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • All Cheeses Great and Small

  • A Life Less Blurry
  • By: Alex James
  • Narrated by: Alex James
  • Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (40 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

All Cheeses Great and Small

By: Alex James
Narrated by: Alex James
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

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. It will also include illustrations by Graham Coxon.

©2012 Alex James (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Bit of a Blur cover art
Verse, Chorus, Monster! cover art
Good Pop, Bad Pop cover art
Don't Look Back in Anger cover art
A Likely Lad cover art
From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast (Series 1) cover art
The Mess We're In cover art
Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn cover art
Glutton cover art
Cotswolds Memoir cover art
How to Be a Rock Star cover art
Creation Stories cover art
Oasis the Truth cover art
Diddly Squat cover art
Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances cover art
Pandamonium! cover art

What listeners say about All Cheeses Great and Small

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    28
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    25
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    23
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Really enjoyed this book

A really good listen. It's interesting to learn about the totally different life Alex now leads and his obvious passion of his rural life. The real life country house.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

really enjoyed this book

I would recommend it to fans but it didn't set me on fire 1st book was better

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

from bass player to (accidental) life style guru

I've listened to many, many audio books but never felt compelled to write a reviw - until now. Beautifully written and narrated - the words flow, the images are conjured & life is good ! This could become a blueprint for living the dream..........

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Lives in a house, a very big house in the country!

An everyday tale of country folk, and a middle-aged pop star adapting to the rural life. James' narration is sometime difficult to follow, often taking no account of punctuation - but that does not detract from his obvious passion for his farm and all things rural. A charming, gentle tale - well worth a listen!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

We long for the wrong life

Strangley I've put off listening to this for a while. "Bit of a Blur" was such a important book for me in my 20s, it had that sense of adventure and longing to "Make it" and for some reason it's taken me almost 10 years to hear the second part of Alex's journey.

I don't know if it's because I'm settled with a family, a mortgage and a solid career but this book was a delight and may actually be better that the book before. I long for the chaotic/relaxing life on the farm but makes you appreciate what you have around you. I'd love to hear a follow up of the 13 years since (irony I finish the book on the 13th anniversary of the Hyde Park gig, my favourite gig I've been to).

thanks Alex, I bought some Blue Monday to celebrate the end of the book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Could he be bothered?

Alex James wrote and reads this.

His performance comes across as he really couldn't be bothered . I'm being polite.

Sentences flow into each other in a punctuation free, monotonous race to the end of the recording(s) . Or at least that's how it sounded to me. Definitely lives up to the nonchalant attitude sometimes accredited to the author by some journalists.

If he couldn't be bothered, nor could I and I gave up listening to it a couple of chapters in. I skipped to random later chapters to check if it was more of the same - and it was unfortunately.

Loved his first book (including the audiobook read by Alex James, brilliantly and authentically) . This one however,... nah...

Zero stars. Pity.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!