All Creatures Great and Small

The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor

By: James Herriot

Narrated by: Christopher Timothy

Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Find All Creatures Great and Small: The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor, read by Nicholas Ralph, star of the new PBS Masterpiece series, on Audible.

These are the stories that catapulted James Herriot to literary fame. When this book was first published, it was a simple volume of memoirs by an unknown Scottish veterinarian. But within a year, the book became recognized as a masterpiece. And in the two and a half decades that followed, Dr. Herriot became one of the most universally loved authors of our time.

In this first volume of his memoirs, then-newly-qualified vet James Herriot arrives in the small Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and he has no idea what to expect. How will he get on with his new boss? The local farmers? And what will the animals think? This program is filled with hilarious and touching tales of the unpredictable Siegfried Farnon, his charming student brother, Tristan, and Herriot's first encounters with a beautiful girl named Helen.

Now as then, All Creatures Great and Small is full of humor, warmth, pathos, drama, and James Herriot's love of life. His journey across the Yorkshire dales, and his encounters with humans and dogs, cows and kittens, are lovingly told by Christopher Timothy with all the fascination, affection and joy that suffuses Dr. Herriot's works.

©1972 The James Herriot Partnership; Master recordings produced by Chivers Press Limited: If Only They Could Talk (p) 1994, It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet(p) 1993, Let Sleeping Vets Lie (p)1994 • Compilation (p)1996 by Macmillan Audio (P)1996 by Audio Renaissance

Critic reviews

"One of the funniest and most likeable books around." (Atlantic Monthly)
"If there is any justice, All Creatures Great and Small will become a classic of its kind....With seemingly effortless art, this man tells his stories with perfect timing and optimum scale. Many more famous authors could work for a lifetime and not achieve more flawless literary control." (Chicago Tribune Book World)
"Herriot charms because he delights in life, embraces it with sensitivity and gust, and writes with grace. All Creatures Great and Small may well be the happiest book of the year." (The New York Times Book Review)

A Wonderful Listen--Stories That Never Get Old

I have to be honest--I'm a biased reviewer. I love this book. I have read the whole series years ago in print and watched the TV program as well with great pleasure. I have even seen the actual vet surgery on a visit to the Yorkshire area. So I was thrilled to have the recorded book in my library too.

These are low stress, positive stories that brim with joy and silly escapades. What I call a comfortable listen. Especially good when the stress of modern life is too much and you need to escape to another time. To me they never get tired or old hat. Always good for a laugh. Highly recommended listening!

Excellent book, excellent narrator, one problem

Any additional comments?

Christopher Timothy is fantastic as always, and makes the book come alive. My only problem with the recording (and the others in the series) is that the narration is punctuated with musical interludes, ostensibly at dramatic moments. Instead of enhancing the listening experience as I'm sure it was intended to do, I found this extremely distracting, because the music (sometimes of poor sound quality) interrupted the flow of the story.

Comfort Listening

Many audio books require major blocks of time in order to do the story justice. You feel obligated to listen through to a logical breaking point. One of the beauties of either reading or listening to a James Herriot book is that you can absorb it in small doses without feeling cheated by limited time. Although more is clearly better and over the three volumes you ultimately become as devoted to the people in his life as he was, you can still listen to the tales in the individual segments and feel fulfilled by each. Especially with a reader as good as this one, the listener does not have to put forth a lot of effort to maintain focus.

For these reasons, this is an audio book that I would highly recommend for someone who is in ill health or is hospitalized. The tales are life affirming, listening is undemanding, and the experiences of a Herriot book are as psycolgically nourishing as the best "comfort food."

Creature comfort

James Herriot's books are, for me, the ultimate in comfort books. Which is odd, it occurred to me while listening to this audiobook; there's blood and gore and uterine explorations and knackerings and death and cruelty… There is casual mention of deeds and practices which would turn PETA's collective hair white. But I've been reading these books since I was about ten. (Which, considering the language, is surprising. Them Yorkshire farmers were salty, mind.) And then there was the wonderful tv series.

That last is what made the audiobook ideal: the reader is Christopher Timothy, who played James in the series (alongside my beloved Peter Davison as Tristan). I think he's one of those I'll follow anywhere, listen to anything he reads. He's perfect. Not just because I know him so well in the role already – he is a warm, funny, compassionate reader, wonderful at the accents and natural in his delivery.

Just like Alf Wight, better known as James Herriot. The things I mentioned before – well, they were simply a part of life on a Yorkshire farm, in a Yorkshire veterinary practice in the first half of the 20th century. It was as it was, there were no better treatments than some of the medieval remedies used, and for the most part animals were well kept because they were vital to the livelihood of their owners. There is a surprising lack of sentiment overall, whether the animal in question is a pig or a puppy, a horse or a heifer.

Which isn't to say the stories are strictly cool and clinical – not by a long mark. Tricki Woo is the perfect embodiment of the series as a whole. The pampered Pekingese "son" of a rich widow, he is a good-natured little furball whose ailments tend to stem mainly from that pampering. And when he goes flop-bott or shows other symptoms which alarm his Mrs. Pumphrey, "Uncle Herriot" is summoned on to the scene at once. The reward for James's promptitude is baskets from London at Christmas (I can't even fathom how expensive that would be, sent all the way to the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930's) along with other periodic delicacies – so James, naturally, has a mercenary fondness for the Peke. But he is also genuinely fond of the dog for his own self, as a personality, and of Mrs. Pumphrey as well. And balancing it all out like a splash of lemon juice is Mrs. Pumphrey's chauffeur, responsible for the spasmodic bouts of exercise she penitently orders, along with the role of body servant to the dog, and he loathes Tricki with a deep and burning passion. (And when the pig Nugent comes along, there is much hilarity.)

So, yes, there is some cringing as we visit the knacker's yard, or when some archaic remedy is brought out. But it merely acts in the same lemon juice fashion on the warmth found in the daily interactions with the farmers and peers and kids with their goldfish, the dogs and cats and horses and pigs and cows and sheep, the slowly disappearing way of life of the Dales farmers. The madness that is the Farnon brothers; the surely-hopeless love James has for a client's daughter – eccentric as it all can be, it still rings true, and that's the key. The book is, to co-opt what they might say about a particularly nice cob, as sound as a bell.

So, whether it should be a comfort book or not, it got me through a particularly bad night recently. The very definition of a comfort book. I love these stories.

More Than Just Animal Stories

James Herriot is a gifted story teller. I was given these books to read as a child and loved them dearly. On a whim I downloaded this book and was surprised at the sophistication of the writing and the depth Herriot brings to a story. These books are not just for fans of the animal story genre, a category of books I grew out of around 9 years old. These stories are rich with the lives of the characters who he writes beautifully and the glimpse he gives into Yorkshire life is believable, warm and human.
The audio book is read well, and the narrator is skilled with creating different voices and accents that arn't painfully fake.
I must add a side note that I would not give this book to a child unless they have a certain amount of maturity regarding biology and the lightly crass speech of some of the farmer characters. I grew up in a house where my mother would apologize for saying "oh sugar!" so i can quite understand how this ended up in my hands, but I'm glad it did.

Possibly the World’s Most Perfect Audiobook

Usually a book this long demands pretty consistent listening. If all the major and minor characters, family connections, plots and subplots, hidden motivations and subtle psychological shadings of, say, Anna Karenina or Lord Jim are to be appreciated—and the shattering denouement satisfactorily shattering—then all those elements need to be uppermost in one’s mind. This can present problems in an audiobook, where leafing back through the last several hundred pages is really not an option.

But for all its substantial length (almost 16 hours), for all its myriad characters and situations, this somewhat fictionalized memoir, though written as a continuous story, is episodic in its construction, with many natural places where, when real life interferes with one’s listening, one can hit pause. Even days afterward, the thread can be picked up again effortlessly with a little rewinding. There’s no need to remember the mysterious postscript in Countess Anastasia’s note to Lady Miriam that you last saw three and a half hours ago in Chapter 7, or recall exactly where the paperknife of Oriental design—one of seven possible murder weapons that could make a wound that narrow—is really hidden. You just keep listening as a leisurely string of loosely related, delightful, poignant or, more often than not, just plain funny episodes involving all creatures great and small unroll before your very ears. It really might be the world's most perfect audiobook.

True, there is character development, a love interest, conflict, successes and failures and an ultimate goal that needs to be achieved—all the elements that go into the construction of a good yarn. But the center of the book seems—at least to me—to be the eventful un-eventfulness of life; the flow of work and seasons and the gradual realization of a young veterinary surgeon (who was simply looking desperately for a job, any job) that he has stumbled into the ideal situation in the ideal country that also happens to be the home of his ideal mate.

Chief among the books many excellences is the complete and utter lack of hokum. In a tale of simple farm folk living their simply country ways, it would be so easy to slide into a sort of dewy-eyed, idealized semi-Soviet Realism. Add the fact that this is the memoir of a man looking back 30-some-odd years and the threat of a heavy Nostalgic Fog rolling in is even greater. Instead we get the Yorkshire Dales farmer and his relations as they were, accent, idiosyncrasies, stinginess, nobility, arrogance, tenacity, warts and all. Siegfried, our hero’s boss, is ultimately loveable (even admirable) for all his maddening habits. And Tristan means well.

Added goose: our reader is Christopher Timothy, the actor who played James Herriot in the classic BBC series. Besides the familiar voice, Timothy is a dab hand at conveying the many accents and personalities that inhabit this book, highland or lowland, drunk or sober, refined or earthy, male or female.

The only downside is due to the age of the recording. It lacks the crispness you expect of audiobooks of more recent vintage. Also, the book is broken into 14 “chapters” each of which contain several actual chapters. Hit the wrong button or accidentally leave your iPod playing on it’s own, and finding your place again can get tricky. Unfortunately, a tentative dip into the next volume reveals a far lower audio quality. But at least in the case under advisement the somewhat mushy, analogue quality of the recording and less-than-logical organization of the material never interfere with the story. And that’s the important thing.

Funny, sad, tender

Many years ago my dad handed me a greasy book and said, "Here, read this. I think you will like it." I thought - Oh no, it is going to be a cowboy book, or something else that I could imagine my dad liking, but knowing I definitely would NOT. He worked at a steel mill, thus the grease, and he read on his breaks and his lunch hour. I dutifully took the book, trying to think of a way to get out of reading it, but instead, I was hooked by the end of the first page.

The book he gave me that day was "All Creatures Great and Small." It instantly became one of my favorites, and I subsequently devoured many of James Herriot's books. When I was able to purchase it on Audible, I hoped that the audio version would live up to my memories of when I read it years ago. I was not disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was almost like reading it the first time because of the length of time elapsed since the first reading. The only tiny little criticism I have is in Christopher Timothy's syntax. I loved his characterizations and his enthusiasm for the book, his wide array of appropriate accents, and the quality of his voice, but he has an annoying way of pausing for what I consider too long between each sentence. He speaks fast, which doesn't bother me at all, but coupled with the unusually long pauses, it started to sound like a fast yakityyakityyakityyak (silent pause) yakityyakityyakityyak (silent pause). The cadence of the reading began to be a little distracting.

Outside of that, I loved every bit of this audiobook, and even with that one annoyance, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. Like me the day my dad first gave it to me, you will not be able to keep from loving it.

great!

I enjoyed watching the All Creatures t.v. series and then discovered the books, which were even better in Heriotts own words. Then....I discovered Audible's series and I have to say, "This is the best way to experience these wonderful stories. The reader is PERFECT, and gives incredible life to all of the tales. I love these books!!

Terrific Stories, Outstanding Reader

Having never read these stories I was unsure what to expect. I had no idea what I was missing. These stories by James Herriot (real name, Alf Wight) are wonderful. This review applies to all the titles in that series because I've now listened to them all. As a side note the narrator, Christopher Timothy, also stars as Herriott in the BBC series.

deserves six stars!

This is a really wonderful recording of a wonderful book. I have read the book and seen the BBC series, so you'd think I'd be tired of it by now, but I loved listening to the recording. I know I will return to it many times. The stories are usually funny, sometimes sad, and always wise. The author paints such vivid pictures that I feel as if I've visited Yorkshire and met the people.

The reader is the actor who played the author in the TV series and is one of the best audiobook readers I've ever heard. He does a great Yorkshire accent too -- something he didn't have to do playing Herriot himself on TV.

I'm eager to hear the sequels as well.

Classic view to the past

A wonderful insight to the lid 29th century read enthusiastically be Christopher Timothy. the TV series was great and this just more and more to it. loved it

Gripping read

Beautiful descriptions of life in the Yorkshire Dales. Great to hear Christopher Timothy playing James again.