Nigel is on the sofa with me right now, looking a bit surprised to be off the shelf so early in the year.
Confirm he starts on 1 November but there's a wonderful longish introduction before that, with multiple sections 'Coming in from the cold', 'The scent of winter', 'Fire' etc, so do start a couple of days earlier. The photos are achingly beautiful. I can't wait!
I discovered Nigel last year; I made his Christmas pudding recipe with the kids on Stir-Up Sunday as per. It was a brilliant sticky-hands-for-an-afternoon project and they were so excited to eat it once Christmas Day came. It even converted DP who had foolishly persisted in affecting not to like Christmas Pudding previously. Nigel wasn't having any of that nonsense. The recipe made two biggish puddings. When on the worktop next to each other they looked quite, er, matronly, because of the bowl shape I used!! DP put a grape on top of each and took a photo, I must have it somewhere.
Oh, and we were given a proper Panettone as a present - oh, the smell! Oh the vanilla! It was just exactly as Nigel described; TBH he looked a bit smug about it at the time. Highlights of an otherwise quite shitty Christmas.
I've noted down all the book recommendations on here; many thanks to previous posters. I've not popped by on Mumsnet for ages, so to find this thread today is absolute gold.
Two books which haven't been metnioned yet spring to mind, both non-fiction.
One is The Christmas Cornucopea by Mark Forsyth. Different in atmosphere from Nigel, but the slightly joky tone masks very extensive research and erudition: it's extremely informative. It answers questions like 'Why do we celebrate Christmas on 25 December?' and 'What's the difference between Father Christmas and Santa Claus' in great detail. Don't give it to anyone with know-it-all / mansplaining tendencies. They'll never shut up.
Another is not strictly a Christmas book, but is very much concerned with food that we eat at Christmas: Pride in Pudding by Regula Ijsewijn. She's (IIRC) a Belgian lady with a rather touching passion for traditional British food. It's a wonderful paean to Sticky Toffee Pudding, Beef Suet Pudding, Black Pudding, Yorkshire Pudding, Plum Duff, Flummery, Syllabub, Summer Pudding, Toad-in-the-hole, Spotted Dick, Stew and Dumplings, Pease Pudding, Haggis .... you name it, she gives its history, a recipe and truly gorgeous photos. And of course she covers Christmas Pudding in great detail!
Hope that's of help to somebody. See you all in October. Nigel is going back to his shelf now, before I get tempted to start reading!