James Herriot's private hell: The shocking truth about the man behind TV's most famous vet
By Jenny JohnstonJim Wight is talking about his father's 'little attacks of melancholy'. His quaint turn of phrase evokes a bygone era when expressions such as 'having a turn' or 'an attack of the vapours' might just as easily be used.
But the much harsher word 'depression' would, today, be applied to describe his condition.
Jim says of his father, Alf - who is better known to millions by his pen name and alter ego James Herriot - 'My dad had a wonderfully happy life, but it was one that included little periods of depression, or whatever you like to call it.
The real James Herriot: Author Alf Wight - who used a pen name - based the character on his own experiences as a country vet
'Once, when he was having one of these attacks, I asked what was wrong, and he said he didn't know. He couldn't describe it as anything other than "overwhelming melancholy".'
How poignant then, that the country vet who took to writing about his experiences was unable to explain parts of his own life.
To this day, James Herriot and the fictionalised accounts of his life - based almost entirely on Alf's, but tweaked to avoid libel claims - remain etched on the national psyche, to the point that his old stomping ground, the Yorkshire Dales, is still known as Herriot Country.
Fifteen years after his death, he is still much loved. Yet the man whose books, such as All Creatures Great And Small, brought joy to millions was plagued by depression and feelings of inadequacy - due largely to his relationship with his own parents.
Although from a modest background themselves, his parents never approved of Alf's choice of bride - Joan Danbury, a secretary - because they were socially ambitious for him.
His mother, Hannah, who had delusions of grandeur because her work as a dressmaker brought her into contact with another social scene, refused to come to the wedding; his father, James Alfred, stayed away in solidarity, and Alf was devastated.
It was after his own father's death - by which point Alf had a teenage family himself - that old wounds resurfaced and, in 1960, he suffered a nervous breakdown. Jim partly blames the family history.
'Although they had no money, his parents had scrimped and saved to send him to private school. It was because of this that he had got into university, and been able to follow his vocation. Twenty years on, he was hit badly by the death of his father, and maybe some old worries came to the fore.'
Jim, 67, who followed in his father's footsteps, first as a vet and then as a writer, believes now that Alf was tortured by the thought that he wasn't doing a good job as a father.
Peter Davison (left) as Tristan Farnon and
Christopher Timothy as James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small
which was based on the books of Herriot
'I couldn't have had a better education, and the same goes for my sister, Rosie. I went to university and Rosie got accepted to both Oxford and Cambridge. But in the midst of his difficulties, my father couldn't see that. With depression, you can't put things into proportion.'
That inability to think rationally seeped into the marriage. At one point, Alf became convinced that Joan - always an outgoing, even mildly flirtatious woman - was having an affair.
There was no basis for his fears, but they tortured him anyway. The 'episode' lasted two years and resulted in Alf having controversial electroconvulsive therapy.
'I was in my late teens at the time, and I was shielded from the worst of it,' Jim remembers. 'All I knew was that my father kind of withdrew from everything - from us, from life really. He never talked much about it.'
Alf joined the Yorkshire veterinary practice of Donald Sinclair ( Siegfried Farnon in the book) in 1940. Twenty-six years later he started writing what was to become his ever popular memoir, All Creatures Great And Small.
In all, he wrote eight books about his life as a vet, which were adapted into a TV series and two films. Now, the house where he worked for most of his life - and the model for the vet's home in the famous TV series - is a museum that receives some 50,000 visitors a year. And his fans are not just from the UK.
Jim talks about his own introduction to the James Herriot world - although it would be many years before it was formally known as that.
'From the age of three my father took me to work with him,' he says. 'When he got a call, I'd hop in the car with him and we'd be off, on this great adventure. By five, I was pretty much qualified to do the job myself. There was never a question of me not being a vet.'
As well as writing his father's biography, Jim has also contributed to Herriot: A Vet's Life, a book of nostalgic reflections by the famed Yorkshire writer WR Mitchell, a friend of his father's.
It's more than 30 years since the TV series starring Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy was first screened, but James Herriot will soon be introduced to a new generation. One of the original scriptwriters is currently penning a new series - a prequel which focuses on his experiences at vet school in Glasgow.
Would his father have approved? Alf was fond of saying that he was a vet first and an author second. He would often make the point that, in the middle of the night, when a cow was in distress, farmers cared not a jot for echoes of George Bernard Shaw.
'He always said he was 90 per cent vet and ten per cent author, although his earnings were 90 per cent from writing and ten per cent from veterinary work.
'People often ask me when my father actually retired from veterinary work. That always has me scratching my head. He never really did. He kept coming in, even though he wasn't taking a penny in pay. He just did it because he loved it. It was a way of life, not just a job.'
Although we may never know whether the writing process helped Alf Wight come to terms with the difficult parts of his own past, his son believes that his father remained fascinated with the human condition until he died.
'He was an incredibly sensitive man, with a deep interest in people. I think that's what made him a wonderful writer. One of the things that people get most wrong about my father is that he wrote "nice little stories about animals".
A play based on his work is opening soon and someone asked me recently, "How on earth will they get the animals on stage?" To me, that misses the point. My father didn't write about animals - he wrote about people. That, I think, is what keeps his work alive today.'
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