The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father
by James Wight

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Book Reviews of The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father

Book Review: A wonderful insight into James Herriot!
Summary: 5 Stars

I received the biograpy of James Herriot as a gift from a friend who knew I loved his books. I was going to Europe, and one of the tour stops (all too brief) was once again to be in Thirsk.

I was captured the moment I opened the book and read the first paragraph of the introduction. But before digging into the meat of the story, I had to study the pictures, and I referred to those pictures regularly as I read and was reintroduced to James & Helen, Sigfried & Tristan, and met other characters - in particular, the many pets that Alf Wight called his own.

It got a little embarrassing as I read the book on tour because suddenly I'd burst out laughing in front of everyone - or worse yet, dissolve into tears! The story is told with a warmth and humor that, like the James Herriot books, makes the reader run the gamut of emotion. Yet unlike the Herriot books, the reader knows that this is "the rest of the story", the behind-the-scenes truth that created the basis for Herriot's books.

The book portrays Alf Wight as a humble, hard-working person, persisting in the attempt to achieve his goal of writing a book despite numerous disappointments, a man whose greatest ambition was his occupation as a veterinarian, who did not let stardom get in the way of his love of his work or his love of the beautiful area in which he lived. In a day where so many capitalize on their stardom, it is refreshing to know that Alf Wight was totally unaffected by it, continuing to do what he loved the most.

Thank you, Jim Wight, for giving such an honest and wonderful insight into "The Real James Herriot"!

Summary of The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father

The story of the young vet travelling to Thirsk (a.k.a. Darrowby) was immortalized in Herriot's bestselling books. But The Real James Herriot, Jim Wight's affectionate biography of his father, tells the story of the man behind the nom de plume, who worked in the same practice for over 50 years and was relatively untouched and unimpressed by his fame as an author. Wight the younger (who followed in his father's footsteps and later joined the practice in Thirsk), is undoubtedly the best person to reveal the depths of a man whose public persona was as respected and trusted as the real man who tended to animals in and around the small Yorkshire village where he lived until the day he died. Written with a tenderness that does nothing to detract from the honesty of the book, The Real James Herriot is a fitting, poignant, and often gently humorous portrait of a man who brought so much pleasure through his writing while remaining consistently faithful to the profession that was, ultimately, his first and last love. --Susan Harrison, Amazon.co.uk

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