The Vets of the Yorkshire Dales: A Compendium of Books

"I was glad to be a vet in the Yorkshire Dales." --James Herriot

"The best-laid plans of vets seem to be thwarted fairly regularly." --Julian Norton

Hello m'lovelies! I'm finally here with the post I promised you a week or two ago about the weekend trip I took (when I said I needed to read some more things before I finished the post).

(This is partially because I did not a lot last weekend due to being on deadline.)

Anyway: so, today, as you may have guessed from the title, I will be talking about (drumroll please) James Herriot.

If you don't know who James Herriot is, I will be happy to rectify that immediately...he was a veterinarian who lived and worked in a little town not all that far from Sheffield, and wrote about his work in a series of very famous books starting with All Creatures Great and Small, a classic that I read for the first time when I was ten or twelve. Most of what he's writing about is veterinary work immediately pre- and post-WWII (which makes him approximately a contemporary of Tolkien, egads) and it as absolutely fascinating, not only because veterinary practice is fascinating, but also because he has a knack for describing the landscape and the people who inhabit it in a way that brings them to vivid life in the mind of the reader.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I got a chance to take a trip to Thirsk (the town that in his books he calls Darrowby)...the place where he lived and worked and wrote.



There's a museum there that resides in the old practice where he worked that he talks about so much (Skeldale House, aka Kirkgate). Part of the museum is actually preserving some of the rooms as they would have been when he was practicing, which was absolutely phenomenal. I stepped into the front hall of the house (which is preserved) and almost started crying--he had described it so vividly in the books that I felt like I was literally stepping into the story, and that feeling continued through all the rooms. It was one of the best experiences of my literary life to date. (They also have some fabulous displays of sets from the BBC ACG&S show and also displays of historic veterinary tools that I enjoyed muchly.)



The town itself is also charming, and just as Herriot (aka James Alf Wight--Herriot was his pen name) described it. There's a lovely little market square, with a bunch of shops and a small clock tower, and then the streets around splay out, leading you through the town. Down the street from Kirkgate (Skeldale) is the church where James & his wife got married, and on the way from the train station to the town is the race course that Siegfried loved so much, and also the remains of an old mott and bailey castle. I did some exploring in my in-between time and found a sewing shop where I bought supplies to mend my coat. I also found a cafe/bookshop, which leads into the main point of this post!



I didn't realize this when I went, but the vets who work in the veterinary practice that James helped establish, in Thirsk, still write books! (Prominently displayed in the Thirsk bookshop, for obvious reasons.) So, today you get a review/guide to the books of the Vets of the Yorkshire Dales, from James Herriot to the present! Obviously, this is why the post took me a while to get up...I had to actually read the books!

(In each profile, I'm going to list off each author's works, with stars by the ones I've read and would recommend.)

image credit to owner

James Herriot
James Herriot, aka [James] Alf Wight, came to Thirsk almost immediately after his graduation from veterinary school in 1939. He had originally wanted to work with dogs and cats, but due to a glut on vets on the job market, he ended up being very happy to get a job in a mixed practice run by Donald Sinclair (aka Siegfried Farnon) and worked there for the rest of his life. At the time of his marriage, he became a partner in the practice, and later on his son would end up working in the practice (and becoming a partner as well, I believe). He didn't start writing about his 'adventures' as a vet until he was 50 years old and his wife told him that while he kept talking about writing his stories down, she didn't think he ever actually would. (This, apparently, was just the kick-in-the-pants he needed, lol.) He became a bit of an overnight celebrity, with the original All Creatures Great and Small series being made during his lifetime, but apparently, he never lost his humble demeanour and love for the job.

His books are notable for the down-to-earth but beautiful way in which he describes things, and the wonderful portraits he draws of the owners of the patients he sees. In very few words he can make you understand exactly what kind of people they are, and the dialogue, actions, &c are then very true to the portrait he's drawn. It's magnificent, and a great example of strong writing even though it's (sorta) nonfiction. His books were also my first encounter with the genre of veterinary stories, one of my very favourite genres, and thus they have a special place in my heart, with all of the anecdotes from calving cows to dealing with Tricki Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey.

His works include:
*All Creatures Great and Small
*All Things Bright and Beautiful
*All Things Wise and Wonderful
*The Lord God Made Them All
*Every Living Thing

image credit to owner

Peter Wright
Peter Wright grew up near Thirsk, and as he got older (into what in America we'd call high school) got interested in veterinary practice and ended up spending a lot of time shadowing at the Thirsk clinic (Skeldale/Kirkgate) alongside Alf Wight, his son Jim Wight, and Donald Sinclair. After he graduated vet school, after a brief stint elsewhere, he moved back to the Thirsk practice and started working there as a full-fledged vet, at around the time Alf and Donald retired. At that point, I believe he became a partner in the practice, and was instrumental in allowing parts of the practice to be filmed to make the popular TV show The Yorkshire Vet, moving the practice from Kirkgate to its new (larger, more modern) location, and uniting it with a syndicate-type coalition of small practices.

I've only read one of his books so far, but one of the things that I found delightful about it was his anecdotes about what it was like to work with Alf and Donald. Alf seems like he is just the James Herriot one is familiar with from the books, only more so (and older), and it tickled me very much to learn that the character of Siegfried in Herriot's books was just like Donald, and the real Donald may very well have been more eccentric. (Siegfried brings me a lot of joy in general.) He also has a good number of stories from cases that I found fascinating, but one thing that disappointed me a bit about the book of his that I read was that towards the end, it turned more into an overview of Issues Facing the Veterinary Profession...not that that's not interesting, but I would prefer more stories of practice when I'm reading a book by a vet. :)

His works include:
*The Yorkshire Vet: In The Footsteps of Herriot
My Yorkshire Great and Small
The Tales and Tails of a Yorkshire Vet

Image credit to owner

Julian Norton
Julian Norton is the most recent in the chain of vets at Skeldale who write about their experiences there. He began working at the practice with Peter Wright I believe around 2014 or 15, and was a big part of the TV show. Unfortunately, after the Skeldale practice joined the conglomeration/coalition of practices, he decided he couldn't stay at the practice and moved on, working at other practices in the Thirsk area.

Despite my slight disappointment that he didn't stay with Skeldale (but I get it, people have lives, lol!), I have really been enjoying his books, as they feel even more Herriot-esque to me than Wright's, with their many tales of life in practice, strange cases, sad cases, happy cases, and idiosyncratic people. They don't quite have the simple beauty of the Herriot books, but then, those are one-of-a-kind. :)

His works include:
Horses, Heifers and Hairy Pigs
*A Yorkshire Vet Through the Seasons
A Yorkshire Vet: The Next Chapter
*On Call With A Yorkshire Vet
The Diary Of A Yorkshire Vet
*All Creatures

Image credit to owner

Bonus: The Yorkshire Shepherdess
In my deep dive into the life of Yorkshire vets, I also stumbled across Amanda Owen, aka The Yorkshire Shepherdess, who writes about her life as a sheep farmer and mother of nine in the Yorkshire Dales. I'm a sucker for books about shepherds (as there aren't any books about goatherds, as far as I know) and about large families, so as you may be able to imagine, this was an excellent fit. I haven't read all of her books yet, but I have two more in my TBR pile as I'm writing this, so rest assured I shall catch up in short order (probably in the next few days, lol).

Her books are super engaging as they track the story of her family, the progress of the farm through the seasons, and the incidents and anecdotes of the everyday. They also have a heavy peppering of the delightful Yorkshire accent/dialect, in case you needed another reason to read them... :)

Her works include:
The Yorkshire Shepherdess
A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess
*Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess
Celebrating the Seasons with the Yorkshire Shepherdess




So! How are you? Do you like vet stories? Have you read James Herriot's work? How about any of these other ones?