If Only They Could Talk

Description

Season two of the hit TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small is now showing on Channel 5, featuring Sam West as Siegfried Farnon. 'James Herriot's books have had a lasting and profound effect on my life' Amanda Owen This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of If Only They Could Talk features an afterword by Yorkshire Shepherdess and author Amanda Owen. To young James Herriot, fresh out of veterinary college, Yorkshire appears to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But even life in the sleepy village of Darrowby has its challenges: from his new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to herds of semi-feral cattle and gruff farmers with incomprehensible accents. Heart-breaking and hilarious in equal measure, If Only They Could Talk is the first volume of classic memoirs which chronicle James Herriot's first years as country vet in the 1930's. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of If Only They Could Talk features an afterword by Yorkshire Shepherdess and author Amanda Owen. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

James Herriot, a pseudonym for James Alfred Wight, grew up in Glasgow and qualified as a veterinary surgeon at Glasgow Veterinary College. Shortly afterwards, he took up a position as an assistant in a North Yorkshire practice where he remained, with the exception of his wartime service in the RAF, until his death in 1995. He wrote many books about Yorkshire country life, including some for children, but he is best known for his memoirs, which begin with If Only They Could Talk. The books were televised in the enormously popular series All Creatures Great and Small.

Bulls with sunstroke, pigs on the run and a cake-eating Peke with a betting habit . . . I grew up reading James Herriot's book and I'm delighted that thirty years on they are still every bit as charming, heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny as they were then. -- Kate Humble It's a pleasure to be in James Herriot's company. * Observer * After an evening among his tales, anyone with as much as a dog or a budgerigar will feel he should move to Darrowby at once. * Yorkshire Post *