The morning after: the drilling headache, the waves of nausea, the paranoia, the guilt, the shame . . . yes, it’s the dreaded hangover. We have all been there. But while most of us are familiar with the general misery, less well known are the nuances of the hungover state. According to P. G. Wodehouse, a person, after a night of revelry, may be afflicted by one of six different types of hangover: The Broken Compass, The Sewing Machine, The Comet, The Atomic, The Cement Mixer and The Gremlin Boogie. Each of these has very different and specific characteristics, and the treatments for each are by necessity varied.

At last, we give you The Hungover Cookbook, a self-help manual that helps the morning-after drinker to identify the nature of his/her hangover and tailor the treatment accordingly, with recipes and remedies that precisely suit each invalid’s state of mind. It includes over 100 recipes including: Huevos Rancheros; devilled kidneys; kedgeree; hot Bloody Mary; special mustard & cheese mash with sausages; blue cheese on toast with pears and pickle; lemon and demerara sugar pancakes; Knickerbocker glory with refresher sweets, and, of course, inevitably, the perfect bacon sarnie.

This beautifully produced book does not promise the reader ‘a cure’ but it does offer some fun, and some good food, on the road to recovery. For those of a ginger disposition, it will offer a soothing experience, not just a list of ingredients, and transform dealing with a hangover into a subtle, multi-faceted art rather than merely chucking a ‘full English’ at it!