INTRODUCTION
by Jim Wight and Rosie Page
Our father, James Alfred Wight, practised as a veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire for almost fifty years. He tended to the animals of his Thirsk practice around the clock, and later chronicled his experiences of veterinary practice, writing under the pen name of James Herriot. The love he had for his profession, along with the countryside around him and the people who lived there, fuelled his imagination and resulted in eight books, all of which sold in their millions around the world.
Literary success, however, didn’t come to Alf Wight until he was in his fifties, as it was only then that he could set aside his evenings for writing. To us, he was simply a devoted father and a busy veterinary surgeon who spent long days and many nights driving around the hills of Yorkshire visiting his animal patients. As children, we often joined him on his farm visits, jumping into the car, always with a dog or two in the back, the cold, sweet-scented air of North Yorkshire all around. We didn’t come just to watch, though, we were there to help – to open and close gates, run back and forth to the car to fetch syringes or penicillin, knowing exactly which packets to reach for before we could even read. Dad relished spending time with us, and we loved seeing him at work, so much so that we both ended up as medics with local practices – Jim as a veterinary surgeon working with Dad and Rosie as a GP in Thirsk.
From an early age, we both learned invaluable lessons about animals, not least that sows can be fearsome creatures, as thirteen-year-old Jim discovered when he was trapped in a sty and one came roaring towards him, only to have Dad holler: ‘You have got to get in and out quickly! It’s no good being frightened of the bloody things!’ The odd escaped cow presented a similar risk, proving that animals are nothing if not unpredictable – mishaps that would later feature in Dad’s books! But we loved it all and for a small child nothing can match the thrill of holding a new-born lamb or discovering a litter of kittens in some straw or puppies in a basket. Just as Dad spent hours driving around the hills of North Yorkshire, so did we, first as passengers in a variety of aged cars – often having to jump out of our Austin A70 so Dad could coax it up the notoriously steep Sutton Bank – and then as teenagers, both of us learning to drive as we bumped along farm tracks, taking Dad on his rounds.
Our father first arrived in the North Yorkshire town of Thirsk – fictionalized as Darrowby in his books – in 1940, and he lived and worked in the area for the rest of his life. He never lost his soft Glaswegian accent, however, having spent the previous twenty-three years in the Scottish city, at its schools and then at the Glasgow Veterinary College where he trained. Suddenly immersed in a rural world, he witnessed a community on the cusp of change, when rural vets spent much of their days out and about on small family farms, tending to cows in cobbled byres, birthing sheep in open fields or chasing piglets, reared for the Yorkshire delicacy of fatty bacon, around in rickety tin sheds. Working all hours, he met an array of unforgettable characters, principal of whom was his long-time practice partner Donald Sinclair, immortalized in the books as Siegfried Farnon.
While his job demanded much of his time, and was physically exhausting, our father had for many years dreamed of writing and putting his experiences down on paper: the Yorkshire he had grown to love, the quirky people he had met, the array of animals he treated and the vast changes he had seen in veterinary practice. He had always been a voracious reader; his school diaries and letters as a young man are full of the kind of colourful and humorous descriptions that he would utilize to such great effect in his later books.
It took a long twenty years, however, for him to turn his dream of writing a book into reality. At first, he wrote short stories on various topics, treating his writing largely as a hobby, tapping away at his typewriter in the evenings. After some gentle prodding from our mother, he decided, in 1965, to focus on writing a full-length book about a world he knew: veterinary practice. Over the next eighteen months, still working full-time and often at night, he crafted a novel based on his experiences. Entitling it The Art and Science, he sent it off to the publisher Collins. Ultimately Collins turned it down for publication but he received an encouraging reply from one of their readers, Juliana Wadham, who gave him a crucial piece of advice. As his stories were clearly based on his own life and real events, why not write it in the first person as a semi-autobiographical work?
Dad took to the idea enthusiastically and he immediately set about reworking his book into an account of his first year in veterinary practice. By the summer of 1968, it was finished, with a new title of If Only They Could Talk, as suggested by a local dairy farmer and friend of Dad’s, Arthur Dand. Surprisingly, Collins turned the book down again, much to Juliana Wadham’s disappointment. Their loss, however, would turn into another publisher’s gain, when Michael Joseph accepted the book for publication. The only change they required was that he alter his pen name from James Walsh, who was a real person on the veterinary register. Dad kept ‘James’ but came up with the alternative ‘Herriot’, inspired by the Birmingham City and future Scotland goal-keeper Jim Herriot. He considered himself first and foremost a veterinary surgeon, which is why he went to some lengths to preserve his anonymity as an author, not only changing his name but setting the story in the Yorkshire Dales, thirty miles from Thirsk, and in 1937 rather than 1940 when he really arrived.
If Only They Could Talk introduced Darrowby, the Yorkshire Dales, James’s erratic partner Siegfried and his younger brother Tristan, and many of the extraordinary individuals that would populate the James Herriot books. Descriptions are vivid, characters and dialogue brilliantly drawn, the language light and accessible, with stories that are by turns hilarious and incredibly touching. Most of the tales in the book are based on real events and are reproduced just as they happened. Like James Herriot, Alf fell asleep under an acacia tree in the garden of the practice while waiting for his interview; he too treated an indulged Pekinese dog with ‘flop-bott’; Siegfried’s arguments with his brother were just as explosive and the dialogue true to the word; and Tristan really did prang his brother’s beloved Rover – and the list goes on. Some of the incidents and events may have been combined but the vast majority were based on real cases and many of them, such as the first calving story in the book – Dad face down on a cold floor, his arm deep in a straining cow for seemingly hours, without being offered so much as a cup of tea afterwards – we remember Dad telling us, much to our and his amusement.
The first James Herriot book was published in the UK in April 1970. While our father was thrilled, he was also nervous about how some people would react to being portrayed in the book, not wanting to upset friends or clients. He often changed their names and occasionally their gender in a bid to disguise their real identity, while some characters combined the traits of several individuals. Sometimes this worked but his descriptions and characters were often so well drawn that people couldn’t help but recognize themselves or others in the books. Generally, people were flattered to be included; some were even annoyed if they weren’t, as was the case with Mr Smedley, a little old man who came into the practice one day waving his stick and shouting: ‘Why haven’t you put me in your books, Mr Wight?’
Sales for the first book were steady but not meteoric in the first few months after publication. We were both in our twenties by this time. Jim, having graduated in veterinary science from the University of Glasgow, had been working with our father at the Thirsk practice for three years, while Rosie, who had studied medicine at Cambridge, had just begun her first job as a junior doctor at the Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. At that point, no one at the hospital had heard of the name James Herriot. Rosie once lent a copy of If Only They Could Talk to the hospital librarian, Malize McBride, who was married to Hamish, one of the doctors there. Rosie remembers Hamish coming into breakfast the following morning and cursing her to the heights because his wife had read the book right through the night, waking him up intermittently by laughing so much – the story of James dressed up in the ridiculous rubber suit when cleansing a cow had reduced her to tears of laughter. Hamish, however, got his own back when he read the book the following night and kept her awake with his chuckling!
This of course all boded well for Dad’s book. We knew it was good and immensely entertaining but we had no idea then just how much people would grow to love his stories and what the future held in store. Dad was simply happy to have fulfilled his dream of having a book published. At the time, we’d sit in the kitchen and joke with Dad, saying, OK, now you’ve had a book published, why not do a film? We’d roar with laughter about who might play him and I think we agreed that the smooth-voiced Leslie Phillips could be perfect for Siegfried. To us, this was just a bit of fun and a million miles away from our day-to-day lives – little did we know this would all play out in reality.
Towards the end of 1970 If Only They Could Talk was reprinted and the publishers asked Dad whether he’d consider writing a follow-up. Having enjoyed writing the first book so much, he’d already begun working on a second manuscript, entitled It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet, which was duly delivered and published in January 1972. As with the first book, the London Evening Standard serialized it, boosting sales, and Michael Joseph committed to a bigger print run. This book covered Dad’s second year in practice and included the array of personalities and the charming humour that worked so well in the first book, although it introduced a new character: our mother, Joan Danbury, renamed as Helen Alderson. While our mother was happiest out of the spotlight, she was perfectly content to feature in the book. She wasn’t a farmer’s daughter as Helen is, but so much else about their first few months together is true: the chaotic first dates, their small wedding in Thirsk and a working honeymoon testing cattle for tuberculin amid the grassy, meadow-sweet hills of the Dales.
A third book, Let Sleeping Vets Lie, was published in April 1973 and flew off the shelves, rapidly rising to the top of the bestseller lists. Vet in Harness followed in 1974 and by the time Vets Might Fly was published in 1976 Michael Joseph were printing in the region of 60,000 hardback copies, as they did for Vet in a Spin in 1977. Now James Herriot was a household name and paperback sales of the books were spectacular; by 1979 each of the first six books had sold more than a million copies – an achievement only then matched by Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series.
Having worked long hours throughout his life, just about keeping his head above water, the financial rewards of Dad’s success were welcome, principally because he no longer had to worry about money – although it never motivated him. He continued to run the Thirsk practice with Jim, who as a qualified veterinary surgeon had joined in 1967; we were all leading busy lives and Dad’s books were just one of many issues we discussed as a family. If he was reading the newspaper, he might mention that one of his books was at the top of the bestseller list, but before anyone had time to respond he’d have moved on to why Sunderland FC hadn’t beaten Wolverhampton the previous Saturday. He and his day-to-day life remained largely unaltered by his success.
By 1980 there were few households that didn’t have at least one copy of the James Herriot books on their shelves; the readership spanned all ages and backgrounds and prompted a surge in applications to study veterinary science. The love for Dad’s books was not just limited to the UK: they also sold well in Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, and were hugely popular in the United States. There, the first two books were combined into one omnibus edition, entitled All Creatures Great and Small and published in November 1972. The book rocketed into the bestseller list and by the end of 1973 paperback sales in the US had reached a million copies. The subsequent four books were also combined into two volumes and sales were equally as impressive, catapulting our father to worldwide fame. While Dad was naturally excited that so many people enjoyed his stories, he was not comfortable with the media attention that was suddenly focused on him. He turned down countless television interviews and public appearances and even kept his face off the books as much as possible. In 1973 he was persuaded to tour the US twice, flying from city to city for book signings and television appearances. It made for a wonderful experience, but he was always pleased to be back in Yorkshire, and by the time he returned from his second tour in the autumn of 1973 he was so drained, and in fact ill with bronchitis, that he vowed never to do another tour: ‘I love America and its people but I’m not going back, just yet…’ and he never did return.
Jim was also pleased to have Dad back home, largely because the Thirsk practice was so busy. While Dad was working on his books, Jim shared many of the night call-outs with the practice assistants so that Dad could concentrate on daytime shifts and his writing, but Dad always prioritized his work as a veterinary surgeon. By then, throngs of tourists from across the globe had begun turning up at 23 Kirkgate, with queues snaking down the street on the two afternoons our father set aside to sign books and speak to visitors. While Jim may have grumbled a little at the distraction, Dad felt he owed as much to his fans, especially those who had travelled from as far away as the US to come and see him. As the queue grew, he also decided to set up a collection for a stray-dog sanctuary, the Jerry Green Foundation Trust, which under the leadership of Sister Ann Lilley (Sister Rose in the books) features in The Lord God Made Them All.
While visitors to the practice were principally there to see the real James Herriot, and were often overcome with excitement to meet him – which always bemused Dad – they were also delighted if Donald Sinclair (better known to them as Siegfried) made an appearance. This of course tickled us as, since we had grown up in and around the practice, Donald and his younger brother Brian (on whom Tristan was based) were like family. They were a constant presence in our lives, Donald was Jim’s godfather and we always referred to him and his wife as ‘Uncle Donald and Auntie Audrey’.
Because Jim worked alongside our father and Donald, he had a taste of rural veterinary practice as it had been for Dad. As a result, quite a few stories from the first six books were experienced by Jim and related to Dad afterwards. Dad was continually on the lookout for fresh stories and he asked Jim and others at the Thirsk practice to remember anything interesting that happened to them on their rounds. He would jot the details down in notebooks, his writing virtually indecipherable to anyone else, distilling them into simple headings to which he’d repeatedly refer as he wrote.
By 1975 the idea we once laughed about – seeing Dad’s book on the big screen – turned into reality when the first movie of All Great Creatures Great and Small, originally made for a US audience, was released in cinemas in the UK. With Simon Ward playing Dad and Anthony Hopkins starring as Siegfried, Dad was thrilled, if not a little astonished to see his little stories set in Yorkshire in movie theatres. Another film, It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet, followed in 1976, this time with John Alderton as James Herriot and Colin Blakely as Siegfried. Two years later the BBC aired the first television series of All Creatures Great and Small. Shot in the Yorkshire Dales, it went on to become a huge hit, adored by fans of all ages and regularly attracting 15 million viewers each week. Broadcast from 1978 to 1990, the seven series featured the virtually unknown Christopher Timothy as Dad, the much-esteemed Robert Hardy as Siegfried, the future Doctor Who, Peter Davison, as Tristan, and Carol Drinkwater and then Lynda Bellingham played Helen. Once again, visitors poured into the Yorkshire Dales and Thirsk, both from the UK and across the world, and that area of North Yorkshire was soon labelled as ‘Herriot Country’. As various small businesses popped up bearing the Herriot name, it gradually dawned upon us that people were latching on to Dad’s success, that his books were drawing people in from far and wide. Dad simply took it in his stride and paid little attention to that kind of thing, although he was amused by one brochure he saw: ‘Come to our hotel, deep in the Yorkshire Dales, home of James Herriot, the world’s most famous vet … No pets.’
While most around Thirsk knew that Alf Wight was the man behind James Herriot, many of his fans were unaware that Herriot wasn’t the author’s real name, although his fame had grown to such an extent that a letter sent in the 1970s to ‘James Herriot, Vet, England’ still somehow made its way to the practice, albeit with various possible locations scratched out and a jokey note from our postman reading: ‘It shouldn’t happen to a postman…’ Awards and honours also began to flood in for Dad, including an OBE in February 1979 followed by an invitation to join Her Majesty the Queen for lunch later in the year, where he learned that the Queen, a renowned animal lover, was a fan of his books and known to ‘laugh out loud’ when reading them. In 1982 he received the Fellowship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, of which he was particularly proud and in 1984 he won the Yorkshire Salver in recognition of his services to Yorkshire. In 1991 he was also offered the honorary position of Life President of the Sunderland Football Club. Having been a keen football and club supporter all his life, he regarded this honour as particularly pleasing but preferred not to sit in the directors’ box, instead continuing to sit among the crowd in the terraces where he could soak up the atmosphere.
Dad continued to work full-time right up to 1980 when he was almost sixty-five years old. Unlike other bestselling authors, he chose not to move abroad, which meant that the bulk of his earnings went into Her Majesty’s coffers in the form of tax. He was never a greedy man and maintained, ‘I love living in Yorkshire among my friends and family’, and that was that. While he was immensely proud of his literary achievements, he always knew what made him happiest and was unaltered by the success he achieved, writing in 1980: ‘In my early days as a young vet with a family I had either to work round the clock or starve but it was during those hard days when I spent every waking hour dashing about the countryside usually with my children in the car that happiness seemed to steal up behind me and tap me on the shoulder.’
The seventh James Herriot book, The Lord God Made Them All, was published in 1981 and went on to become a major bestseller both in the UK and US. That year, Dad decided to put down his pen and focus on his life in North Yorkshire, keen to spend more time with the family, his grandchildren in whom he always delighted, and the dogs who were his constant companions throughout his life. Five years later, he was persuaded to write some new material for the television series of All Creatures Great and Small, which led eventually to the publication of his final book Every Living Thing in 1992. The long-awaited return of James Herriot proved to be another hit.
Despite his huge success as a writer, Dad was, however, happiest when he was at home in Yorkshire and considered himself fortunate to have hit upon a profession he loved, always maintaining that he was ‘ninety-nine per cent vet and one per cent author’. As much as he loved writing and being a published author he preferred to be treated simply as the local vet, recognizing that many of his clients had little time for books. As he put it, ‘The farmers round here couldn’t care less about my book-writing activities. If one of them has a cow with its calf bed hanging out, he doesn’t want to see Charles Dickens rolling up!’ The reality was, however, that many of the local farmers read his books and enjoyed them, and they were quietly proud to have James Herriot as their vet but they were not the type to gush about his achievements, which suited Dad very well. Whereas American fans were vocal in their adulation, the Yorkshire community around him were more reserved, although they derived pleasure in having a bestselling author in their midst. Throughout the twenty years that Rosie worked as a GP in Thirsk, it was a rare day that anyone referred to her being the daughter of a famous author – as far as the local community was concerned, Alf Wight and his family were just one of them.
Dad always felt fortunate to have met so many interesting people through his work and they in turn enriched his life. His stories are full of the characters he met – the farmers who have long since gone, as well as Donald and Brian Sinclair, who are pivotal to the books. The pair could be frustrating and chaotic, but both were skilled veterinary surgeons, very funny and always good company, and many stories in Dad’s books revolved around them. Dad remained good friends with them throughout his life, and both were just as characterful in later years.
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Growing up with Dad and working in the same community to which he dedicated his life means we know well the people and places on which all the classic James Herriot books are based. This book contains some of our favourite stories from the series – many of which we still laugh about, and we still see several of the families and former clients of Dad and Jim as we walk around Thirsk today. Creating this book has rekindled precious memories, of the small farms that once dotted the landscape, the wonderful animals, and of a bygone world, all of which Dad brought alive with such skill and tenderness that we wish we’d told him more often just how glorious a writer he was.
Copyright © 2022 by The James Herriot Partnership
