Country Cheeses My grocer, high-class, had a National Mark notice
hung up behind the counter : Buy English Cheeses, Cheddar, Cheshire, Stilton, Leicester. Once, in Leicester itself, I had seen golden-orange globes of Leicester (I don't know of a better sight in a shop window than a fat whole cheese, unless it is a fat whole ham), but I had never tasted it. So now I asked for it. " Leicester ? " the grocer said. " Never stock it. Never have stocked it." I pointed to the notice. " Nice fellow," I said. " How do you suppose I can be patriotic ? " All this drew my attention to the question of English regional cheeses. There remain only, it seems, about a dozen of them ; and of these about half, including Leicester, are mostly factory made. And of the rest the most exclusive, Double Gloucester and Blue Wensleydale, are to be found not where they should be found, in their native places, but largely in expensive West-End shops and holy-of-holy West End clubs. It has been said that a settled civilisation of long-standing is needed to produce great cheeses. Perhaps we, with our miserable dozen species, have not been civilised long enough ; perhaps we are not civilised at all. On this basis of reckoning it is interesting to consider the Welsh, Scots and Irish. Wales produces, it seems, one decent cheese, Caerphilly, now almost entirely factory-made ; Scotland one variety ; the Free State several ; Northern Ireland none at all. Perhaps some cheese- loving patriot can disprove this dreary record.
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