James Herriot’s Yorkshireis lavishly illustrated with photographs of places that evoked many happy memories for Alf. The pictures of Wensleydale brought back images of the hard, early years helping his old friend Frank Bingham, at a time when he had first set eyes upon the magic of the Yorkshire Dales. There is an account of a Youth Hostelling holiday when I and a schoolfriend, Ian Brown, walked with my father through Wensleydale and Swaledale. Such was the popularity of the book, that this walk has been traced by many people and has become known as the ‘Herriot Way’.
The vivid photographs of the Thirsk area, the place where the vast majority of the stories had their origins, and where my father brought us up along an uncertain but happy road, had especial meaning for him.
The North York Moors and the Yorkshire coast are not forgotten. Derry Brabbs’s pictures of the old Grand Hotel in Scarborough made Alf shiver as he recalled his days in the RAF, drilling on the beach and sleeping in the cold, windswept dormitories. On a softer note, he fondly remembers the town of Harrogate, his haven of escape every Thursday afternoon at a time when he was working day and night to establish himself as a veterinary surgeon.
Every section of the book stirred memories, some of them hard but all of them happy. ‘But what I see most clearly on my map,’ Alf wrote in the book’s introduction, ‘is the little stretch of velvet grass by the river’s edge where I camped or picnicked with my family. I can see the golden beach where my children built their castles in the sand. These are the parts, when my children were very young, which stand out most vividly from the coloured paper. These, indeed, as I look down on my Yorkshire, are the sweet places of memory.’
James Herriot’s Yorkshireis about the recollections of a best-selling author. To his family, it meant a little more. It invoked memories of a father who ensured that we were able to share his happiness in those days when we were young.
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By 1979, over 12 million books by James Herriot had been sold, and Alf had little more to prove to his publishers, but writing had become a way of life and, in 1981, his seventh book of stories was published. This book, entitled The Lord God Made Them All, took him over four years to complete but there were reasons for this. Not only had he written the text for James Herriot’s Yorkshiresince the last volume of stories, Vet In A Spinpublished in 1977, but the new book was much longer. This was primarily for the American market with its insatiable demand for ‘big’ books, and enabled St Martin’s Press to publish The Lord God Made Them Allat the same time as the British edition. They had, of course, had to wait to publish Vets Might Flyuntil Vet In A Spinwas published, so they could produce one big volume, All Things Wise and Wonderful.
The new book became an instant best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic, and such was James Herriot’s popularity in the United States that over half a million copies were sold there in hardback alone.
Although I and many of my father’s close friends have always regarded his earliest books as our favourites, this one contains some wonderful material, and like the others, brings to life a whole host of new and fascinating characters.
In chapter 15, he describes his treatment of a dog with demodectic mange, belonging to Sister Rose. This character was based upon a woman called Sister Ann Lilley, from the Friarage Hospital in nearby Northallerton. She was closely involved with my father’s favourite animal charity, the Jerry Green Foundation Trust, and she ran several small dog sanctuaries of her own. She is someone for whom Alf had great respect. It is a sad story ending in the death of Amber, a beautiful golden retriever, to whom, in real life, my father had become very attached. The Lord God Made Them Allis another book that illustrates not only the triumphs but also the heartbreaks that punctuate the life of every veterinary surgeon.
The period in which the book was set had moved on, and now included stories about Rosie and me – who were both given our real names. Extracts from James Herriot’s books were reproduced in countless periodicals and magazines, primarily in Britain and America, and there was one chapter in The Lord God Made Them Allwhich proved to be the most popular of all.
The story tells of James Herriot’s attendance at a concert at which his young son was performing. I was about eight years old when the concert, organised by my piano teacher Miss Stanley, took place in the Sowerby Methodist Chapel. The concert was a succession of recitals by her young pupils and they all performed admirably – all except me. I made two disastrous attempts at a little piece called ‘The Miller’s Dance’ before, to wild and relieved applause from the assembled parents, I finally succeeded at the third try. The effect on my father’s nervous system was devastating.
The hilarious description in the book is one that I have read many times, and I can understand why it is so popular; the tension of watching one’s offspring performing in public is something with which many a parent must identify. James Herriot’s harrowing experience of witnessing his child transforming a nice little concert into a farce is one that many must dread.
Years later, when my father was asking me if I remembered the incident, and I replied that I didn’t think I had ever been so frightened, he replied, ‘Well, it might have frightened you, but it very nearly killed me!’
I had always felt a little guilty about my reluctance to practise the piano, and thus waste the cost of the lessons, but at least it provided my father with material for a chapter that became one of the most popular he ever wrote.
On reading his manuscript prior to publication, I found as usual the humorous stories the most enjoyable, especially his account of saving his own life in the face of an enraged bull by smashing the creature repeatedly over the nose with an artificial vagina – but there is, of course, far more to his writing than this. The Lord God Made Them Allis a book that, once again, illustrates James Herriot’s understanding of human nature – it is a book not just about animals and veterinary surgeons, but about the everyday emotions that everyone experiences.
The spectacular triumph of James Herriot’s Yorkshirehad not gone unnoticed by the Reader’s Digest Association. Having published much of James Herriot’s work in their condensed books on both sides of the Atlantic – and sold millions of copies – they approached Michael Joseph with the idea of producing an illustrated volume of selected stories from the James Herriot books. Alan Brooke, Michael Joseph’s editorial director, together with Alf’s editor, Jenny Dereham – who had succeeded Anthea Joseph following her tragic death from cancer early in 1981 – came up to Yorkshire with representatives of the Reader’s Digest, to talk my father into the idea of the book. He was soon won over. This book, published in 1982, was called The Best of James Herriot.
Apart from the introduction, Alf had comparatively little original work to do for this book. It was a compendium of his stories, and Alf had final approval of the content. Interspersed amongst the stories were sections which covered different subjects connected with Alf, Yorkshire and the veterinary profession. These sections were superbly illustrated with a mixture of historical photographs of the places about which he wrote, new colour photographs of the incomparable Yorkshire landscape, and a multitude of line drawings. Readers interested in a post-war cow-drencher, a Swaledale sheep, or the intricacies of a dry-stone wall would find it all in this book.