All Creatures Great and Small is the first in a series of memoirs of a Yorkshire veterinarian. James Herriot (pseudonym) is a country doctor fresh out of veterinary school in the 1930’s. You’ll travel with him over the fells and moors of the English countryside and into the homes and muck filled stables of the Yorkshire farmers and people of Darrowby. You’ll grow tense as he lies down on a cobbled floor in snow mingled with dirt with his arm inside a cow trying to position a calf for a life birth. You’ll laugh out loud as the pigs go berserk and charge out of their pen in a solid block and into town. And you’ll be captivated when Mrs. Pumphrey’s pampered Pekingese, Tricki Woo, goes flop-bott again!
In his first 6 months of practice, James treats cows, horses, pigs, cats and dogs 7 days a week, morning noon and quite often during the hours when the rest of the world is asleep. Among the humans that James will encounter are Siegfried and Tristan, Miss Harbottle, Uncle, and Mr. Dumbleby.
I imagine the current proprietors of Pineknot Farm would have been relieved many times over to see Herriot’s little Austin angling through their gate and rattling over the bumps to the barn. And I hope he would have found a pound of butter or half a dozen eggs placed in his car as he left.
