Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 6, 2023 20:57:22 GMT -8
No, I haven't read the book...yet. But I was watching To Tell the Truth the other day, and who should be featured by James Herriot (pen name for Alf Wight) of All Creatures Great and Small fame. I've watched quite a bit of the original series over the years. It ran from 1978-1990, which was quite a long run. Listening to an interview by Robert Hardy, he noted that once the original material from the book was used up, the series declined. And my memory is that after the first season or two, it pretty much just repeated itself. But it ran for 90 episodes over that long time span so it was surely a fan favorite. There's a reboot of the series but I haven't watched any of that yet. Despite my familiarity with the original series, I didn't recall what James Herriot looked like when he appeared on To Tell the Truth. But I did choose correctly (barely). This video should start at the appropriate segment. See how you do.
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Post by kungfuzu on Mar 6, 2023 21:15:09 GMT -8
I got it right, because I vaguely recall having seen some program with him in it years ago. But his accent also gave him away. No way those other two were from the north, i.e. Yorkshire or Lancashire, which I visited many many years ago.
I read his two books which were very popular in the USA, and they were enjoyable, as I recall. In his old age, he admitted that he embellished somewhat. The books published in the US were somewhat different from those published in the U.K.
All Creatures Great and Small (1972)
All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974)
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Post by artraveler on Mar 6, 2023 21:39:52 GMT -8
All Creatures Great and Small (1972) All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974)
Back in the late 70s there was a mega-church near my bookstore. They once purchased 500 copies of each for their church. It was at the time the largest sale we every made. As I recall the paperback price was 2.95 we gave a discount to $2.00 plus tax. Made the month. For the next several years the church would purchase 25-50 copies of each a year. The Harper and Row carried the bantam book label and we always were one of the largest retailers of these titles in paperback.
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 7, 2023 7:32:21 GMT -8
I had not heard of All Things Bright and Beautiful.
Going by the accent of Christopher Timothy, who played James Herriot in the original series, I had no idea where the guy was from. But in the end, it came to a 50-50 tossup. #2 couldn't have been him. And #1 gave a passionate answer about poodles of the type, "I don't know about poodles. They don't have them in the country."
Or something like that. Anyone who isn't particularly fond of poodles is okay by me. As for embellishment, it's hard to imagine that the story of Mrs. Pumphrey's pampered Pekingese, Tricki Woo, wasn't at least a bit of an embellishment. But then again, regarding some dog owners, it's easy enough to suppose something like that to have been absolutely true.
As Robert Hardy noted in a later interview, there was certainly realism as to the animals. If it showed their armed shoved up the back of a cow, it really was shoved up the back of a cow. Talk about hazard pay.
He probably embellished the eccentricities of their clients, for nearly every one of them seemed an oddball in one way or another. Again...country life in Yorkshire. Who knows? If you wrote honestly about life in a libtard city of today, it would be so bizarre that people in 30 years time might not believe you.
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