I think there’s a chance that rather than encouraging people to cook, the current glut of competitive cooking shows on TV only alienates us normal folk and makes cooking delicious food at home seem impossibly complicated and unachievable. His beautifully written prose, warm personality and unpretentious, easy-to-follow recipes have won him a huge following. Interwoven with his quite Gothic upbringing are observations about the food he loves and hates and how the mention of them can take you back to a particular time. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site.

Thankfully it made its way outside of the walls of Eton to become a popular dessert across the whole country. Other traditional English dishes are just as ubiquitous – steak and kidney pie, lamb chops and others (for more, see box below) figure on menu after menu in cafés, pubs and restaurants across the land, but regional specialities are increasingly important. You can wander through roads lined with restaurant after restaurant, especially in SoHo or Chinatown, and eat through your heart’s content. One of my first stops was at Sally Lunn’s Eating House established in 1680 and is apparently the oldest house in Bath. It there was one flaw, I personally would have liked them grouped into themed sections rather than scattered all over the place.The genius of his food writing comes from an obvious belief that food and happiness share the same organ in the brain. I enjoy ‘observing the English’ type books because I’m familiar enough to recognize everything but still foreign enough to enjoy the quaintness and contradictions. Even in fashionable fine-dining restaurants you’ll find a revival of traditional English cuisine, with creative takes on the classics entering the realms of haute cuisine. It's still amusing it places, and still leaves a warm feeling for olde Englishe foods, but it just doesn't have the rich flavours of the previous one. The perfect way to read it for as long as colleagues are a good humoured bunch, you can share the most tantalising and rib tickling treats from this smorgasbord of all our fond food memories.

It seems many different areas have similar delights though, there’s a Banbury cake, a Chorley cake, and a Blackburn cake all with similar designs, but it was the squashed fly name and the Eccles cake that stuck in both the nation’s memory and to the hands of its children.

The best thing about living abroad or going on holiday is going to foreign supermarkets and try whatever seems interesting and different. To be honest, that’s all the cookery books on my shelf get used for, that or propping the door open. Other books are worth a read on this topic (culinary oddities) such as The Gentlemans Relish, but the tone is distant and cold when compared with Slater and his unmistakable passion for the quirks of a culinary life. It has a moreish saltiness and zing that makes it hard not to wolf down the entire thing in one sitting. In fact my complete digestion of Nigel Slater's observational memoir would suit his style perfectly: I enjoyed it a few pieces at a time while crunching celery, cheese, and on occasion a chocolate bar during my work lunch (half) hour.

As Roald and Felicity Dahl put it in their charming Roald Dahl’s Cookbook, ‘In music, the equivalent would be the golden age, when compositions by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were given to us. Who remembers the ritualistic technique of breaking into a KitKat ( clearly not unique to me) or the disappointment of opening the biscuit tin only to find a lone pink wafer? Dozens of regional breweries, many of them with long histories, and contemporary microbreweries produce nuanced, highly flavourful and distinctive styles of bitter, known as “ real ale”, to traditional recipes. From mashed swede, home made gingerbread, funeral teas and dinner parties to washing up, tipping and Heinz ketchup, Nigel Slater celebrates the eccentricity and diversity of the British attitude to food, cooking and eating.Written in a style similar to that of Nigel Slater's multi-award-winning food memoir 'Toast', this is a celebration of the glory, humour, eccentricities and embarrassments that are the British at Table.