Dzheyms Kherriot

James Herriot was an English writer, veterinarian, and pilot, the author of books about animals and people. His real name was James Alfred Wight.

He was born into the family of an orchestra conductor who provided musical accompaniment for silent films. The future writer spent his childhood and youth in Glasgow, where he received his primary education and graduated from veterinary college.

At that time, obtaining a veterinary position was fairly difficult, but James was fortunate: Donald Sinclair, by then an experienced veterinarian, took him on as an assistant veterinarian in the town of Thirsk in Yorkshire. James began his practice there. It was there that the future author of books about animals spent his mature years, there that he married Joan Catherine Danbury in 1941, and there that his children were born — his son James and daughter Rosemary.

During the war, from 1941 to 1943, James Alfred Wight served as a pilot in the Air Force.

He published his first book, If Only They Could Talk, under the pseudonym James Herriot. He had to take a pseudonym because stories about the practice of a rural veterinarian could be regarded as advertising, and at that time advertising veterinary services was prohibited. This was the beginning. Later he wrote a whole series of books in which he described the everyday life, hardships, and joys of a rural veterinarian.

The books, written with great love and subtle humor, became bedside reading for novice veterinarians and animal lovers alike.

At first the writer produced short notes about a rural veterinarian, brief stories in several chapters that were later published in collections. Such well-known books by James Herriot as All Creatures Great and Small, published in 1972, and All Things Wise and Wonderful, written and published in 1977, brought him fame not only in England but also in other countries into whose languages they were translated.

In 1979, James Herriot was awarded a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. In 1982 he became an honorary member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and in 1983 he received an honorary doctorate in veterinary science from the University of Liverpool.

The writer died at his home in Thirsk on February 23, 199