James Herriot
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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.
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[edit] Biography
Alf Wight was born 3 October 1916 in Sunderland, England, to James and Hannah Wight. Shortly after their wedding, the Wights moved to Glasgow in Scotland, where James took work as a pianist at the local movie theater, and Hannah was a singer. For Alf's birth, his mother returned to Sunderland, bringing him back to Glasgow when he was three weeks old. He attended Yoker Primary School and Hillhead High School.
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. On 5 November 1941, he married Joan Catherine Anderson Danbury. The couple had two children, James Alexander (Jim), born 1943, who also became a vet and was a partner in the practice, and Rosemary (Rosie),born 1947, who became a medical doctor. Jim still practices in Thirsk, whilst his sister Rosie is retired, having worked for many years as a general practitioner in Thirsk.
From 1940 until 1942, Wight served in the RAF. His wife moved to her parents house during this time, and upon being discharged from the RAF Wight joined her. They lived here until 1946, at which point they moved back to 23 Kirkgate, staying until 1953. Later, he moved with his wife to a house on Topcliffe Road, Thirsk, opposite the secondary school. The original practice is now a museum, "The World of James Herriot", while the Topcliffe Road house is now in private ownership and not open to the public. He later moved with his family to the village of Thirlby, about 4 miles from Thirsk, where he lived until his death.
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. Challenged by his wife, in 1966 (at the age of 50), he began writing. 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. He died 23 February 1995, aged 78, at home in Thirlby[1].
[edit] 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. Despite his authorial success, he continued practising until a few years before his death with his colleague Donald Sinclair. 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. He also renamed Donald and his brother Brian as Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, respectively.
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. This style lends itself well to the various collections and adaptations, as selected stories can be enjoyed.
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). The first story details his arrival in Darrowby in 1939, applying for employment with Siegfried Farnon. The tales continue with his developing experience as a vet, his blossoming romance with local farmgirl Helen Alderson, their marriage, his conscription into the RAF during the Second World War, and the birth and growth of their children (accurately named Jimmy and Rosie).
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. He takes a very matter-of-fact, clinical approach to medicine, but explain procedures in a way that is accessible to the layman. The stories vary in tone from heartwarming, to humorous, to tender and sad (but optimistic), to inspiring and romantic.
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. These and other sociological factors prompted a largescale shift in veterinary practice over the course of the 20th century: at the start of the century, virtually all of a vet's time was spent working with farm animals; by the turn of the millennium, the majority of vets practice mostly or exclusively on small animals (dogs, cats, and other pets). 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. Among the episodes included in the books are memories of his first hysterectomy on a cat, and his first (almost disastrous) abdominal surgery on a cow.
The Herriot books are often described as "animal stories" (Wight himself was known to refer to them as his "little cat-and-dog stories"[2]), 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.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
[edit] Quotes
On his fame:
- "If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw."[2]
On writing:
- "For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents. The words 'My book,' as in 'I'll put that in it one day,' became a sort of running joke. Eventually she said, 'Look, I don't want to offend you, but you've been saying that for 25 years. If you were going to write a book, you'd have done it. You're never going to do it now. Old vets of 50 don't write books.' So I purchased a lot of paper right then and started to write."[2]
On being a vet:
- "I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me."[2]
- "Years ago, farmers were uneducated and eccentric and said funny things, and we ourselves were comparatively uneducated. We had no antibiotics, few drugs. A lot of time was spent pouring things down cows' throats. The whole thing added up to a lot of laughs. There's more science now, but not so many laughs."[2]
On retirement:
- "There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off."[2]
[edit] Trivia
- At the time of his death, the Reader's Digest Condensed Book volume containing All Creatures Great And Small (Volume 96, 1973 #5) was the most popular book in that series' history.[2]
- His last book, Every Living Thing, immediately went into the top 10 bestseller list in Britain, and had an 865,000 copy first edition printing in the United States.[2]
- After 50 years of practice, he claimed to have only had two dog bites.[2]
- His fame has generated a thriving tourist economy in Thirsk. Local businesses include the "James Herriot's World" museum (located in the actual Skeldale House, the building of the original vet practice), a restaurant named "Herriot's", and a café called "Darrowby Fayre".
- His tax accountants repeatedly advised him to move outside the UK, due to the high tax rates at the income level his royalties produced (up to 83%). One adviser even took the Wights to Jersey to try to convince them. Wight, however, was determined to stay in his beloved Yorkshire, living on the remaining portion of his royalties and the relatively meager income from the vet practice.[2]
- In October 2006, Argyll Publishing published a book with the title "Pet Hates: The Shocking Truth about Pets and Vets" by "Josh Artmeier", an anagram of "James Herriot".
[edit] References
- ^ Associated Press, Obituary
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Margolis, Jonathan (Dec. 12, 2002). "But It Did Happen To A Vet". Time Magazine
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Tribute site
- The World of James Herriot: scenes from Herriot's life in Thirsk
- James Alfred Wight OBE (thirsk.org.uk)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Herriot, James |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wight, James Alfred |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | British veterinarian and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 3, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sunderland, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 23, 1995 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Thirlby, England |
