Let me start by saying that I am discussing the book here, not the BBC TV series that is currently airing. The TV series is sweet and I’m really enjoying it. But it differs from the book, the way that the BBC TV series about Gerald Durrell differed from his book about his family’s time in Corfu.

Both the TV series and the books follow the life of James Herriot as he takes his first real job as a vet. He moves from Edenborough, a large city, to a very small town in the Yorkshire Dales, to become the assistant vet in a household consisting of his quirky boss, Siegfried Farnon; Siegfried’s younger brother, Tristan; their housekeeper, Mrs. Hall; and a pack of domestic dogs that roam the house sounding like “a wolf pack in full cry.” James is nervous, when the book starts: his colleagues have shared a number of terrifying stories of how they messed up their first big cases as new vets. James knows little about Siegfried – he received a telegram asking him to come up and have tea, if he’d like, and see if they’d get along.

Think back to the worst job interview you’ve ever had and then picture this: after a long train journey, followed by a bus for hours, you arrive in a small town in the middle of nowhere and wander about unaided until you find the building where you’re supposed to get interviewed. The person you’re supposed to interview with has gone to visit his mother; and no one knows when he will return. While sitting in his waiting room – which, since the business works out of the owner’s home, is also his living room – waiting for him to return, you overhear a client leaving a message for your future boss. The man describes a problem that he needs solved. Between the client’s thick accent and technical slang, you haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about. And yet, if you get the job, it could end up being your job to solve that very problem. This man is followed by another client, who can’t seem to understand you when you ask him questions. And that man is followed by a beautiful, elegantly dressed young woman who your prospective employer has apparently invited to tea. And forgotten about, to her disgust; for some reason she seems to hold you responsible. After the bombshell leaves, you lean your head back, exhausted, tired and grimy from your journey, and fall asleep. Your prospective boss wakes you up when he returns. He looks nothing like you imagined a Siegfried Farnon would – a roly-poly German immigrant – he looks like a 30-year old Donald Sutherland or Peter O’Toole, no wonder the beautiful woman was disgusted that he had stood her up. He apologizes: he has a terrible memory and forgot he had asked you to tea that day, you and that beautiful woman. And then, without asking you a single question, he gives you the job, on a trial basis. Post that on LinkedIn for hiring managers to learn from.

If you’ve been watching the latest version of the TV series – I have vague memories that maybe there was an earlier version – there are a few key differences between the series and the books.

For one thing, the TV series is much too clean. Oh, every now and then, there’s some light pratfall about a vet slipping in the mud but the book is really muddy, dirty, vets up to their shoulders in muck and manure. You can smell the books. There are a lot of anecdotes in the books that have to do with smell – the smell of the house dog that farts that the vets aren’t able to cure to the dismay of the genteel owner; luckily the vets discover a man who lost his sense of smell in WWI who thinks this dog is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And there’s a lot of discussions about scent as a method of diagnosis.

And the weather is too good in the TV series. I admit that I love watching TV-Herriot crest the hill in his old car and take the view down over the beautiful fields of Yorkshire, green and granite contrasted against the clear blue sky – it’s a postcard from the Yorkshire tourism board. But the weather’s not so good in the books. Blue skies are rare. It often rains and they have to wade through deep mud to find the sick animal in some far-off field. Or they have to hope the unheated, old car will make it up the hill to the farmer who lives way the heck up on that barely-paved road, in three feet of snow. Sometimes it’s bitterly cold, their hands cracking from the cold, fingers fumblingly frozen, and they are barely able to see what they’re doing in the dead of night, with just a kerosene lantern to work by.

This is what has had made this book – and it’s sequels – favorites since they were originally published in 1972. We always had these books on our shelves at home. I’m not sure if they belonged to my father – a surgeon who dreamed of being a writer. I’ve read some of dad’s work – the stuff he didn’t publish – and it reminds me of a human version of these, but dad didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading a James Herriot of medicine.¹ Or the books may have belonged to my mom, who loved animals and studied zoology in college.

But, anyway, I discovered them and devoured them at an early age. When I came to New York, I may have brought a battered mass market copy with me; if so, it was lost in the flood. The edition on my shelves now is from 2004, a beautiful trade paperback that has none of the grit of the original gold-covered cover shown above². They’re comforting books, good to read when quarantined by a pandemic, or while you’re trying to sleep at night. The stories don’t always have happy endings – as vets know, the problem is often not the animal but the human. People refuse to follow the vet’s advice. Animals can’t always be cured. People do dumb things. Herriot, who is still, really learning how to apply his education in the real world, struggles, makes mistakes, angers clients, disappoints his boss, pulls off a big win, stumbles again, persists.

The tone of the books is light humor, without moralizing. He makes fun of how he struggles to understand his clients – the language, the culture, the personality of a small farmer barely making ends meet during the depression – and he makes fun of himself, his boss, and Tristan. But it’s a gentle humor, not cruel or biting. The kind of funny stories that you tell about someone you love, or someplace, about a job that you did well for so many years and loved doing, even when it was tough and people made it harder for you.

I like these books now for what they say about learning, about taking a chance to do something despite your fear, about making mistakes, owning up to them, and trying something different. I like what they say about the love and persistence that you put into your calling. It seems to have become cool now to dis working, to dismiss getting emotionally invested in your work, to see work as a paycheck. Or alternately, to work hard, lean in, stay late, arrive early, and burn out. It’s refreshing to read about a man who drags himself out of bed in the middle of the night, drives through blizzards and hail, trudges through muck and snow to find a problem, that maybe he can solve, but possibly not.

Why does he do it? Because, as the Zen Koan says, because he is a doctor.

Literally, this time.

1. Dad’s magnus opus, which his wife was kind enough to cut from thousands of pages to hundreds so it could get published, was about a John LeCarre-ish assassin (which my father knew nothing about) working in Kosovo (where I don’t think he’d ever been). I don’t know if this is true: Dad told me that, after it was published, the mayor of Kosovo heard about it and reached out to him to ask about it. Dad told him where he could buy a copy. ↩︎
2. I found this cover online. Based on the tag, I’m going to guess the original owner bought it at a B. Dalton Bookseller in May, June, or possibly July of 1981. Perhaps it was a Father’s Day gift, as Herriot’s books often were in the U.S.. Father’s Day and Christmas were popular times to give ACG&S (and sequels) as a gift to a dad – they’re very manly books, lightly tinged with romance, although not as much as the TV series, which seems to be geared more towards female viewers. The tag says the book arrived in-store in May, however; and it’s a mass market so wouldn’t have stuck around more than 2-3 months before getting stripped. So Father’s Day is a better guess than Christmas. ↩︎