![]() ![]() Herriot sold 60 million books-and stayed right where he was until his death in 1995. His accountant said to him: You’ve written five books for the tax man, and one for yourself.” But he simply didn’t want to leave home. “He was paying tax at 83 percent and 98 percent of investment income. His son James Wight-also a vet-told me that Herriot was one of the only famous British writers who stayed in the 1970s. Herriot never left the Dales, even when it was in his financial interest to do so. “At times,” he wrote, “it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.” After he arrived in the Dales in 1940 to begin working as a vet, Herriot fell in love with Yorkshire. Herriot’s stories encourage not only nostalgia, but also a subconscious desire for home. The consensus is that amid the frenetic news cycle and the pandemic, Herriot’s hilarious, warm, and touching tales of the people and creatures of another time and place are precisely what the doctor ordered.īut there is more to it than that. ![]() Herriot’s books about life as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s have been republished with new covers, and the TV series has received rave reviews (“pastoral perfection,” “a return to simpler times”). Thanks to the new PBS show All Creatures Great and Small, there has been a surge of interest in the books on which the series is based: the stories of Alf Wight, better known by his pen name, James Herriot. ![]()
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