Ooohh, I think I know my next ebook purchase, thanks!
we’re due for a library visit today, and it’s available!
My work here is done!
I read all the books endlessly as a teenager, and loved the tv series. I was horse-mad, as are lots of girls that age, and spent all kinds of hours in the barn with the cows and horses. I wanted to be a vet, but a sixth-grade teacher told me I was too stupid to be a vet, as I would never get the math needed. So I’ve become the person everyone brings the injured/orphaned animal to, as I teach science.
I read all his books as a teenager, when they were first published and liked them immensely. Also have the coffee-table picture book, James Herriot’s Yorkshire which pictures many of the places he wrote about and makes an excellent addendum to the others. Several years ago I ran across The Real James Herriot and read it avidly. The son did not have his father’s gift for engaging prose, but he had a good story to tell and told it straightforewardly.
Among the more interesting content of the biography was some good insights into the character of Seigfried (whose real name was Donald Sinclair). His portrayal in the first book (All Creatures Great & Small) offended him and for a time threatened his friendship with the author. Herriot toned down the Seigfried character in the sequels out of consideration for his friend and partner. The odd thing was, the man really was such a thoroughgoing eccentric that many people thought his portrayal was too mild. In The Real James Herriot, Wight Jr. tells of some of Sinclair’s real-life episodes and they are…interesting, to say the least.
My mom got me hooked on his books and I had the hymn, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ in my wedding as a nod to her and them.
Sinclair was apparently a real cheapskate. Wight didn’t make any money until he started publishing. One of his colleagues was shocked to find how little Wight was making as a vet – Sinclair hardly ever gave him a raise, and Wight had little concern for money and no head for business and never pursued the matter, I guess.
If the family dynamic between the Sinclair brothers was anything like what was portrayed in the books, I would want to steer away from that.
Robert Hardy is something like 25 years older than Peter Davison! He just looks really young and ages very slowly.
I remember when Peter Davison took over as Doctor Who, I thought, “That idiot Tristan?” From the commentary track, though, he is NOTHING like Tristan – quite shy and self-deprecating.
I am quite sure I could help lambs be born, just from having read those books! 
OMG YES! Read every book, cover to cover, over and over, watched the show…I also have a collection of his stories in a big doorstop of a book. In this book are little drawings in the margins, of farm implements, horse brasses, even Yorkshire recipes…The thing I found so interesting was the development of antibiotics after WWII which changed so much about medicine, for both humans and animals. And I was surprised that, if I’m not mistaken, there was a THIRD partner that was left out of the books entirely, but maybe that would have been ‘too much’ and the characters were a composite (not to say embellished). The books are just a treasure, no other word for it.
You don’t mean Calum Buchanan, do you?
Great books - good TV series.
I think your book is The Best of James Herriot: Favorite Memories of a Country Vet. You can get it for nothing on Amazon and yes, it is a treasure.
That is so sweet!
If you’re ever in Yorkshire, I recommend a visit to his house in Thirsk: http://www.worldofjamesherriot.org/
The downstairs is kept just as it was in the 1950s, with a cabinet full of antique vet medicines. Upstairs is a children’s museum (see if you have the strength to pull a calf out of a cow!). And out back is Herriot’s car and information, including sets, from the TV series.
I love his cat and dog stories.
t’young vitniry wit t’badger? 
I love these books. I’ve read them several times, and I’ve read them out loud to my family, too. That required some discussion of bovine obstetrics (“He put his arm where?”) but it was worth it.
Sort of. In real life, in the book “All Things Herriot” by Sanford Sternlicht I found this:
“there was a third partner to the practice: Frank Bingham, NOT mentioned in any of the five memoirs. He lived in Leyburn. Apparently the practice had a satellite surgery near sheep country in the Pennines.”
He ‘appeared’ on the TV show in the form of another veterinarinan, Ewan Ross.
Yes, “The Best of James Herriot” is the big book I have! Gorgeous photographs of the countryside, too.
Every time we have to call our own vet, I have to resist the urge to yell, “IS THAT THE VIT’NERY?” every time they answer. 
When I was watching the series with a friend some years ago, we were talking about this frequently recurring aspect of the vets’ work. My friend, who had once worked on a ranch, told me, “There is no wrong time to put your arm up a cow’s bottom.”
Words I have always remembered and tried to live by.
I read the books as a kid and still think they are among the best books I’ve read of any kind. Even then, I knew they were a little too good to be true, but I was still a bit disappointed when I read the biography to learn of the embellishments and the differences between his characters and their real-life counterparts. I swore off biographies after that! I plan to wait now until I’ve forgotten all that real-life stuff and then I’ll re-experience the books all over again.
Yeah – Helen was no Helen!