Book info

• Title All Creatures Great and Small
• Author James Herriot
• Year 1972
• Genre Memoir

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James finds he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a local farmer, all the training and experience in the world can’t help him...

Thoughts

I remember trying to read this when I was a lot younger, too young to really be interested in the goings on of a Yorkshire vet, newly qualified in the late 1930s. But now, it was a brilliant read. Tales of James Herriot, settling into a life far removed from his city days studying, with a variety of interesting characters providing each day with a new challenge.

It’s an easy read, smoothly written with just the odd smattering of dialect rather than being weighed down with it. Mixed in to the veterinary outings are a family drama at the practice, and a love story with James and Helen. There’s a little bit of everything, and I really enjoyed it!

Rating: 4 / 5