James Herriot Audiobooks

The name on the covers was borrowed. James Alfred Wight, born in Sunderland in 1916 and trained at Glasgow Veterinary College, took the pen name James Herriot from a goalkeeper he happened to see on television. He practised in the Yorkshire Dales for close to fifty years, and the books came late, after decades of thinking about writing them and not quite starting.

If Only They Could Talk appeared in 1970, when he was already in his fifties. Seven more followed, all drawing on the same territory: the Dales of the 1930s to the 1950s, the hill farms, the freezing byres at three in the morning, the owners drawn as vividly as their animals. Something in that mixture of comedy, tenderness and unglamorous physical work travelled everywhere, and the series has sold some sixty million copies.

Television did the rest, from the 1975 film through the long-running BBC series to the warmly received Channel 5 revival of 2020. Wight died in 1995.

Every Herriot recording here is read by Christopher Timothy, who played the young vet in the BBC’s All Creatures Great and Small and has narrated the memoirs ever since. It is an unusually happy pairing: the voice most listeners already associate with Herriot, delivering the actual prose.

The titles listeners have scored sit right at the top end, and the best entry points available now are All Things Bright and Beautiful and The Lord God Made Them All, each roughly half a day of very good company. All Creatures Great and Small itself, the omnibus that opens the sequence, is on the shelf too for anyone who wants to begin at the beginning.

All Things Wise and Wonderful, Every Living Thing and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet are queued to follow. Wherever you start, the Dales are the same. The listing sits below.