Includes bibliographical references (p. x-xi) and index.

James Herriot, the quiet, modest Scottish vet who wrote books that became bestsellers all over the world and were turned into two films and a much-loved television series, died in February 1995 at the age of seventy-eight. He was mourned by millions of fans who had laughed and cried at his delightful stories of life as a vet in Yorkshire. Yet Herriot, whose real name was Alf Wight did not have his first book published until he was fifty-three, and it was only with his second book, that he started to become famous. He always attributed that first success to Graham Lord's glowing review in the Sunday Express in 1972, and indeed wrote to Graham to thank him for giving him a lift he would never forget. And he never did forget it. Despite achieving enormous fame, he always made time for interviews with Lord and they kept in touch right up to the month before Alf died. Now Lord has researched and written a detailed and affectionate biography of a remarkable man whose charm and modesty remained unchanged by phenomenal success and adulation. Alf wrote amazingly little about his parents, his poor childhood in a crowded Glasgow tenement or his schooldays, but Lord describes them all in vivid detail after interviewing friends of Alf's from his earliest days in Glasgow up to the end in Yorkshire, where he worked for over fifty years with his partner Donald Sinclair, whom he called 'Siegfried' in his books. Lord has also uncovered some extraordinary events and hidden tragedies in Alf's life and he asks a series of pertinent questions. How much of the Herriot books was true? How much was fiction? And what was his real relationship with the various characters who inhabit the books. This warm but incisive portrait will be enjoyed by James Herrior's countless admirers but will also dispel the myths that have already grown up around the life of the most famous and deeply loved vet the world has ever known. -- Provided by dustjacket.

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