Millions follow exploits of this Scottish vet

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 17

Millions follow exploits of this Scottish vet

Bv

SALLY HOLLOWAY

James Herriot must be the most famous veterinary surgeon in the world. His books have been sold by the millions in both hard and paperback editions. They have been translated into the Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish languages.

The tales of his problems as he drives round the English countryside with his two pet dogs as companions, ministering to farm animals and pets, bulls and budgerigars — or, as one of his titles puts it, “All Creatures Great and Small” — are as funny to readers in Yokohama as they are in New York.

Yet, Herriot was 50 when he began to write, and his first book, “If Only They Could Talk.” was published in 1970. Even now, when two films based on his books have been equally successful, he shuns the fashionable life of a successful author and carries on with the work of a country vet, occasionally breaking off for a press interview or a trip to London for a television appearance.

He was born in Scotland in 1916, the son of two musicians, but his name

was not James Herriot. British veterinary surgeons’ professional etiquette would not allow him to use his real name since it would be considered a form of advertising, so he chose as a pseudonym the name of a footballer. Football is one of his interests, and he is a keen supporter of two famous English clubs, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Although he was, and still is, interested in music, he chose to work with animals and qualified at the Glasgow Veterinary College in the 19305. It was not easy to find work, so he travelled south to Yorkshire and fell in love with the beautiful scenery of the hills and valleys in that part of England. Apart from his war service with the Royal Air Force, he has lived in Yorkshire ever since. His books take the reader through his adventures: his struggles with his eccentric professional partner (who is still his partner in real life); his meeting with a farmer’s daughter who became his wife; the birth of their children (his son is now a vet, too, working in the same practice, and his daughter has qualified as a doctor); the good times, the bad and the funny.

If you manage to track him down to the country town where he lives he will lean against the grand piano in a book-lined sitting-room and try to explain, quietly and diffidently. how he became successful.

“As a child I read a lot, but mostly the great authors like Macaulay and Scott. For 30 years I said that I would write a booK and one day, quite suddenly my 'wife turned round and said: ‘Men of 50 don’t write books.’ That was enough. I sat down and started to write. It did not come easily. I was trying to use the grand style of the great authors

of the past, but it was all wrong.”

He soon realised his mistake and changed h;s style completely. “1 knew that I had to write as if I were chatting .to my friends in a local inn over a pint of beer, telling them about some incident which had happened recently, or in the past.”

He does not shut himself away from his family because, he says, he sees little enough of them anyway, so he writes sitting in an armchair in front of the fire, and often with

the television on. In spite of this, one critic wrote- " Many famous authors could work for a lifetime and not achieve the flawless literary control that this unknown vet has Herriot sent his first book to a publisher who kept it for more than 18 months before rejecting it. The second attempt was more successful. Michael Joseph accepted the book instantly and brought out this, and his second volume, “It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet.” An American firm then joined in and the first two were combined under the title “All

Creatures Great ancf Small,” and launched into the American market where he was an instant and resounding success.

Critics spoke of him in the same breath as Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, Saul Bellow, and Somerset Maugham. They vied for superlatives to describe his work. “Absolutely super, a rarity, magnificently written, insightful, unforgettable,” said one. “Some of the

most memorable cows, dogs, and horses that one

could ever hope to me> • in or out ot print,” saj another. A third came to earth and described the hook as "a chuckleanother. A third came down inducing romp through the muckpits and cowsheds of England." The “New York Times” called him "one of those rare men who know how to appreciate the ordinary," “Let Sleeping Vets Lie" came out in 1973 and later "Vet in Hamess,” published together as "All Things Bright and Beautiful." In 1976 his fifth book. “Vets Might Fly," was again a best seller. The demand fur his books has become so great that Herriot has increased the amount of spare time he devotes to writing and hopes to bring out a sixth volume, tentatively entitled “Homing Vet." this year. It will still be a spare-time hobby; he firmly refuses to let writing encroach on what he considers his “real” work, that of being a country vet.

The farming community who live round him know he is one of the world's most successful authors but, as he say s, "they are not interested in how’ good I am as a writer, but how good I am as a vet.”