Yet it was she who encouraged Alf to take up writing when he was approaching 50, and who spurred him on when he received publishers’ rejection slips. The woman Alf married, Joan Danbury, was a corn-mill secretary, so impecunious that her marriage dowry to him was half-ownership of a pig she jointly reared!Ī deeply private woman, Joan avoided the spotlight.

In the series, Herriot’s eventual wife, Helen Alderson, is depicted as the comely daughter of a prosperous farmer. Only one significant fact has been changed. The scriptwriters have stuck so closely to detail that they have even used the surgery’s post-war phone number, Thirsk 2297.Īnd without wishing to denigrate Christopher Timothy’s superb portrayal of their father, who was born in Sunderland but moved to Glasgow as a baby, they say Scottish newcomer Nicholas Ralph’s accent makes his representation the more realistic. Indeed, in many ways Herriot’s children regard the current version as truly authentic, capturing the ethos of life for farmers and country vets in the 1940s. Pictured: James Herriot on his farm in Yorkshire in 1995

The original All Creatures Great And Small, which ran to 90 episodes, was one of Britain’s most enduring and best-loved sagas. Viewing figures for the new TV series of All Creatures Great And Small are topping 5 million - a record for Channel 5 - and although the original, which ran to 90 episodes, was one of Britain’s most enduring and best-loved sagas, critical praise for the remake has been no less fulsome. ‘His books have been a tonic for people going through difficulties for 50 years, and he’s doing that again now - raising people’s spirits at a really bad time for our country.’ Sitting beside her, Rosie’s brother Jim, four years her senior at 77, nods vigorously. 'Dad’s works have been published in 36 languages, so we get letters from all over the world, and a lot of them tell the same story: Your father’s books helped us through this awful illness, or bereavement. ‘We hear this sort of thing time and again. Rosie Page (pictured with her brother Jim Wight, 77), 73, was approached by an American visitor asking to shake her hand in Thirsk, the quaint Yorkshire town where her father Alf - better known as James Herriot - wrote his uproarious books about life as a country vet

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