The story of James Herriot's formative years at veterinary college, to accompany a major BBC drama series.

John Lewis-Stempel is the author of a number of books, including Six Weeks, The Autobiography of a British Soldier, England: The Autobiography and The Wild Life, in which he lived on food foraged and hunted for in the fields and cops around his seventeenth-century farm, in Herefordshire. Coming from a long line of farmers and being a farmer himself, breeding a variety of livestock, John has always had a warm admiration and respect for vets and is a long-time admirer of James Herriot. James Herriot was the pen name of Alf Wight, who only turned to writing at the age of 50, after a long career in veterinary medicine. Alf Wight qualified as a vet from Glasgow's Veterinary College in 1939 and moved to Thirsk, in Yorkshire, in 1940. He remained there until his death at the age of 78 in 1995. His experiences as a vet living in Yorkshire have been immortalised in a number of internationally best-selling novels, including If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, as well as the long-running television series and film adaptation both entitled All Creatures Great and Small.