Who is James Herriot

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.

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 United Kingdom and the United States.

Despite his authorial success, he continued practicing 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 F.C. in a televised game against Manchester United. He also renamed Donald and his brother Brian Sinclair as Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, respectively.

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 large scale 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" and given that they are about the life of a country veterinarian, animals certainly play a significant role in most of the stories.

Read more on Wikipedia.

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