He also wanted to protect the privacy of the people on whom his characters were based.īorn in England in 1916, Wight grew up and graduated from veterinary school in Scotland before returning to England to practice. He used a pseudonym because the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons did not allow vets to advertise. James Herriott was the pen name of Wight, a Yorkshire vet. What is the key to the books’ success? I think it is the combination of humanity and humour in Herriot’s writing. And the 1940s house in Thirsk, Yorkshire, where Herriot (real name James Alfred Wight) lived and worked is now a museum, attracting visitors from all over the world.
There have been two film and three television series adaptations of them (the most recent British TV adaptation aired in Australia earlier this year). The books, eight in total were published in the United Kingdom, with some combined into omnibus versions making six American books. In the time since, more than 60 million copies of the semi-autobiographical series of books about life as a vet in the 1930s and 40s Yorkshire Dales have been sold. It is 50 years since All Creatures Great and Small was first published.
And when my son is a bit older, I am sure I will read the book to him or he will read it himself. We all watched the BBC adaptation when it was on television. I read my mother’s Pan paperback copy, with its cover image of sheep, farmers, and the vet’s vintage car, when I was growing up. When mum was pregnant with me, dad bought her a paperback copy of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small because it was an easy, pleasant read. An Indian sanyasi’s myth-busting account of Tibet.Start the week with a film: ‘Cape Fear’ is a terrific thriller (but watch the original).Watch: BJP IT cell convenor Amit Malviya’s outburst on live TV as party faces defeat in Karnataka.A new book revives works of a mapmaker who depicted in 1846 how Shahjahanabad had evolved.Modi and Hindutva: Why did BJP’s two big guns fail to fire in Karnataka?.‘The Living Air’: A birder’s long tryst with birds show how they help overcome human fallibilities.Karnataka results: BJP rules in Delhi but wins very few states (and is absent in South India).Last-known female Yangtze softshell turtle, which represented Vietnam’s ‘turtle god’, found dead.Fact check: Was an Islamic flag raised in Karnataka’s Bhatkal with communal motives?.‘Pakistan’s erasure of the 1971 Liberation War from conversations is dangerous’: Author Aamina Ahmad.Art and revolution: Vivan Sundaram, an artist whose work captured the turmoil of contemporary times.
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