Veterinary surgeon and writer, born in Glasgow, W Scotland, UK. Beginning in the 1970s, he brought the vet's world to the notice of the public with a number of best-selling books, such as It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet and Vet in a Spin, as well as several compilations and children's books. Feature films and television series made his work known all over the world, especially the television series All Creatures Great and Small (197780). The stories prompted a thriving tourist industry based on Herriot country, and transformed the public image of his profession, making veterinary medicine one of the most competitive university subjects. In 1992 he was the first recipient of the Chiron Award, created by the British Veterinary Association for exceptional service to the profession.
James Herriot OBE is the pen name of James Alfred Wight, also known as Alf Wight (3 October 1916 – 23 February 1995), a British veterinary surgeon and writer. Wight is best known for his enormously popular semi-autobiographical stories, often referred to collectively as All Creatures Great and Small, a title used in some editions and in film and television adaptations.
Biography
Alf Wight was born 3 October 1916 in Sunderland, England, to James and Hannah Wight.
In 1939, at the age of twenty-three, he qualified as a veterinary surgeon from Glasgow Veterinary College. In January 1940 he took a brief job at a vet practice in Sunderland, but moved in July to work in a rural practice based in the town of Thirsk, close to the North York Moors in England, where he was to remain for the rest of his life.
From 1940 until 1942, Wight served in the RAF.
He intended for years to write a book, but with most of his time consumed by veterinary practice and family, his writing ambition went nowhere. After several rejected stories on other subjects like football, he turned to what he knew best. If Only They Could Talk was published in the UK in 1969, but sales were slow until Tom McCormack, of St. Martin's Press in New York, received a copy and arranged to have the first two books published as a single volume in the United States. The resulting book, titled All Creatures Great and Small, was an overnight success, spawning six sequels (published as four outside the UK), movies, and a successful television adaptation.
Wight was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1992, and underwent treatment in the Lambert Memorial Hospital in Thirsk.
Author
In 1969 Wight wrote If Only They Could Talk, the first of the now-famous series based on his life working as a vet and his training in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. In his books, he calls the town where he lives, which he based largely on the towns of Thirsk and Leyburn, Darrowby.
The books, which told of the many comic and illustrative incidents which happened to him and the people around him, were enormously popular, and by the time of his death he was one of the foremost best-selling authors in both Britain and the United States. Owing in part to the British law forbidding veterinary surgeons from advertising, he took a pen name, choosing "James Herriot" after seeing the Scottish goalkeeper Jim Herriot play exceptionally well for Birmingham City in a televised game against Manchester United.
As literature, Wight's books don't fit the modern definition of a novel, in that each book doesn't constitute a single narrative. Rather, they are best seen as collections of short stories, following the chronology of Herriot's life. In this way, they are much like the compendium books of Sherlock Holmes stories, where each story stands as a narrative in its own right, but taken together, the collection of stories also becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Since the stories are told from the first-person perspective of James Herriot, his character is central to all of the episodes (although this was occasionally changed in the television adaptations, with some stories ending up with Siegfried or Tristan as the primary player).
Wight's storytelling style is clear and simple, and he shows himself to be an astute observer of details, particularly the personality quirks of people.
From a historical standpoint, the stories help document a transitional period in the veterinary industry: agriculture was moving from the traditional use of beasts of burden (in England, primarily the draught horse) to reliance upon the mechanical tractor, and medical science was just on the cusp of discovering the antibiotics and other treatments that eliminated many of the ancient remedies still in use. In the stories, Wight (as Herriot) occasionally steps out of the narrative at hand, to comment with the benefit of hindsight on the primitive state of vet medicine at the time.
The Herriot books are often described as "animal stories" (Wight himself was known to refer to them as his "little cat-and-dog stories"), and given that they are about the life of a country veterinarian, animals certainly play a significant role in most of the stories. However, there are a few of the stories in which animals play little or no part (particularly those about his courtship of Helen), and the overall theme of the stories is actually Yorkshire country life as a whole, with the people and animals being two of the primary elements that give it its distinct character.
The books were adapted into two films and a long-running BBC television programme, all called All Creatures Great and Small, the title of the first volume of Herriot stories published in the U.S.
Bibliography
Books
If Only They Could Talk (1970) It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1972) Let Sleeping Vets Lie (1973) Vet in Harness (1974) Vets Might Fly (1976) Vet in a Spin (1977) James Herriot's Yorkshire (1979) The Lord God Made Them All (1981) Every Living Thing (1992) James Herriot's Cat Stories (1994) James Herriot's Favourite Dog Stories (1995)Omnibus editions
In the United States, Herriot's novels were considered too short to publish independently, and so several pairs of novels were collected into omnibus volumes. The title All Creatures Great and Small was taken from the second line of the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, and inspired by a punning suggestion from Herriot's daughter, who thought the book should be called Ill Creatures Great and Small.
All Creatures Great and Small (1972) (incorporating If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet) All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) (incorporating Let Sleeping Vets Lie and Vet in Harness) All Things Wise and Wonderful (1977) (incorporating Vets Might Fly and Vet in a Spin)Quotes
On his fame:
"If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw."
On writing:
On being a vet:
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