With pigs, things are not always what they seem. Even the name of the author of pigdom’s most famous text has long been uncertain. In P G Wodehouse’s early Blandings novels, the man who wrote The Care of the Pig is always referred to as Whiffle. In Galahad at Blandings, however, he becomes Augustus Whipple. This is the story in which we come closest to meeting the great man, since he writes to Emsworth asking for permission to come and photograph the Empress of Blandings. Alas, thanks to some contrivance of Galahad Threepwood, the man who arrives at Blandings purporting to be Whipple is in fact Sam Bagshott, Gally’s godson, while the real Whipple is left cooling his heels at the Emsworth Arms. In Sunset at Blandings, his last book, Wodehouse wrote the name as Whipple but then amended it to Whiffle.

Now the perfectly named James Hogg has found – and reprinted in facsimile- the long-lost book. Better still, the copy he has discovered is Lord Emsworth’s very own, complete with Emsworthian annotations in the margin. And the title page settles the question of authorship once and for all: ‘The Care