All Things Wise and Wonderful

By: James Herriot

Narrated by: Christopher Timothy

Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Listeners adore James Herriot's tales of his life as a Yorkshire animal doctor in All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Now here's a third delightful volume of memoirs rich with Herriot's own brand of humor, insight, and wisdom, and the basis for the PBS Masterpiece drama.

In the midst of World War II, James is training for the Royal Air Force, while going home to Yorkshire whenever possible to see his very pregnant wife, Helen. Musing on past adventures through the dales, visiting with old friends, and introducing scores of new and amusing characters—animal and human alike—Herriot enthralls with his uncanny ability to spin a most engaging and heartfelt yarn.

Millions of readers and listeners have delighted in the wonderful storytelling and everyday miracles of James Herriot in the over thirty years since his delightful animal stories were first introduced to the world.

©1977 by James Herriot (P)1996 by Audio Renaissance Tapes, a Division of CPU, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Christopher Timothy played James Herriot in the beloved BBC series "All Creatures Great and Small." Here Timothy reprises his role as the young country vet in this third collection of Herriot stories....Sit back with a cup of tea as Timothy tells you funny, gentle and occasionally sad tales about characters such as local farmers with broad accents; the posh Mrs. Pomphrey, whose overfed Poermanian passes gas; and the Ministry of Agriculture officials, who rake James over the coals for inept form-filling. Timothy develops countless individual voices with different class accents, and all are perfect.” —AudioFile

“... humor, realism, sensitivity, earthiness... gentle compassion and a lively sense of the sad, the ridiculous, and the admirable.” —Columbus Dispatch

Better with each book!

Each book is better than the last! More witty and funny. He tells you what he has learned about life and his job. Everyone should read these.

A All-time Favorite

I've read this book several times and I listen again and again to this audio book. Christopher Timothy is the PERFECT choice to bring James Harriott's wonderful writing to life. I escape often into this winsome world of innocence intertwined with the practicality and toughness required of those days. There's many a good laugh along the way.

Music?

I love this story but the music at random intervals or at the end of a chapter is very annoying . But I would not have that stop you from listening to it. There is a point that the chapters get mixed up but that isn't that much of an issue. I just wish there was one with no music and the last chapter where it's supposed to be. But it's still a great book and with Chris reading it, it's a very enjoyable book!

excellent as usual

another herriot classic filled with ups and downs of animal practice. vocal performances excellent as usual

Perfection!

Reading the works of James Herriot in print is always enjoyable. His writing is beautiful and moving. Listening to Christopher Timothy bring those words to life is exquisite. Masterful writing comes together with brilliant narration, and the result is perfection. These books are a treat for the soul.

Great story

James Harriet always writes the best story I really enjoy listening to them on car rides and at night I definitely would recommend listening to this book and all the others

Gentle Journey

Mr. Herriot's gentle journey of triumphs and defeat was a warm reflection of a life well lived. The narrator was captivating and was a welcome companion for the duration of the stories. Regretted for it coming to an end. Happy listening to you.

Wonderful story to get lost in

Love! Love! Love! This is the best narrator! I enjoy listening to the whole series and this one is very fun.

Still funny after all these years

I first read the four original James Herriott books in the late '70s and early '80s, when they were first issued. The U.S. government records audio books for blind folks like myself, and the readers they get are good. However, in the cases of the Herriot books, they made the huge mistake of using an American reader. Fortunately, this recording has a British reader--an absolute must for these stories. Mr. Timothy is exceptional, and sounds a great deal like the man who played Herriot in the TV series "All Creatures Great and Small," in the '80s. The decades between haven't taken the fun out of these tales, and neither has an extremely unkind biography of Herriot, though the author certainly tried to destroy what Herriot created. I close with a line from the original Dr. Doolittle movie--"Maybe what the doctor tells me isn't all together true, but I love every tale he tells me. I don't know any better ones, do you?"

James in the RAF, Homesick and Nostalgic

All Things Wise and Wonderful (1976) is the third of James Herriot's wonderful books combining two shorter ones each, following All Creatures Great and Small (1972) and All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974). Like the others, this one is comprised of numerous short story chapters based on his experiences working as a veterinarian among the fells, moors, dales, and farms of Yorkshire, especially in the fictional community of Darrowby. Like the other books, the stories here range from earthy to philosophical and from comedy to tragedy and depict a wide range of animal and human personalities, idiosyncrasies, and relationships. Like the others, this one mostly takes place from the 1930s on, when animal medicine was modernizing (before antibiotics had been introduced), tractors were beginning to replace draft horses, and dairy farms were becoming industrialized. While the first book tells the overarching story of James starting his career as a vet in Yorkshire and meeting and falling in love with Helen Alderson and the second tells the story of his dating and marrying Helen and realizing that he loves his Yorkshire work and adopted home, this third book tells the story of his training for the World War II RAF and confirming his love of Darrowby and Helen and his vet career by removing him from them. Thus this book, alone of the three, consists of one set of memories (Yorkshire) nested inside another (RAF).

I found the dual memory device uncomfortable and so prefer the first two books, which consist only of Yorkshire stories. Herriot's point is that while in the RAF his memories of home were closer to his heart than his training to be a pilot, which is why at the start of nearly every new chapter something he sees or hears or does in the RAF sends him into a Yorkshire flashback, but many of the memory links feel contrived (as when while waiting to be operated on in the RAF James thinks that he would much rather be on the other end of the knife, which sends him into a Darrowby memory in which he and Tristan are operating on a dog's ear, but this story is really a comedy about Siegfried, Tristan, and James), the RAF experiences only once have anything directly to do with an animal (when James helps deliver the calf of a Shropshire farmer's cow), and the Yorkshire parts are so much more vivid, substantial, moving, and funny that I looked forward to them and regretted leaving them to return to the RAF.

Herriot rarely repeats himself. In addition to depicting a wide variety of human beings (including juvenile delinquents, philosophical farmers, depressed bachelors, laughing spinsters, and weathered old couples) and animals (including dogs, cats, cows, pigs, horses, and a donkey), he writes about many different health problems: false pregnancies, grief, milk fever, fungal growths, foot and mouth, premature blindness, Hodgkin's, prolapsed uteruses, car accidents, and much more. The stories are often suspenseful because Herriot is so good at making us sympathize with the animals and their humans and James cannot always save the lives of his patients or figure out what's wrong with them. As a cat lover, as I was reaching the end I thought, "I wish there were more cat stories to go with the wonderful dog ones," when Herriot recounts the tale of Oscar, the lost cat found starved and disemboweled, one of the most exquisitely sad and happy stories I've ever read by any author.

There is much great writing throughout--

On animals:
"She was the classical picture of an ancient bovine; as fleshless as her owner, with jutting pelvic bones, splayed, overgrown feet and horns with the multitude of rings along their curving length. Beneath her, the udder, once high and tight, drooped forlornly almost to the floor."

On vet work:
"I stared at it intently, appalled by the smooth glistening articular surfaces of the tibio-tarsal joint. There was something obscene in its exposure in the living animal. It was as though the hock had been broken open by brutal, inquisitive hands."

On food:
"Then I bit into the first slice of bread; home made, plastered thickly with farm butter and topped by a lavish layer of heather honey from a long row of hives I had often seen on the edge of the moor above. I closed my eyes in reverence as I chewed."

On people:
"Mr. Barge gave me the kind of sorrowing smile a bishop might bestow on an erring curate."

On place:
"But as I drove away, the somber beauty of the place overwhelmed me. The lowering hillsides burst magically into life as a shaft of sunshine stabbed through the clouds, flooding the bare flanks with warm gold."

About the audiobook, it is perfectly read by Chistopher Timothy, who played James Herriot in the BBC TV adaptations of the books. In addition to loving the material and reading the stories with conviction and delight, Timothy convincingly voices different genders and ages and classes and accents--cockney, Birmingham, Scottish, standard south of England, and, of course, the appealing Yorkshire: "There's nowt spoilin'. Ah never likes to hurry me grub. . . And how about you, Mr. Herriot? You could do with summat to keep your strength up." He also does fine farmer coughs and sneezes and dog howls and barks.

One trivial issue with the audiobook presented as a digital download is that (I assume) they originally were produced as CDs, with string, wind, and piano music opening and closing each disk, which means that often in the middle of stories pleasing but also somewhat distracting music fades in and out.

Readers who love animals or are interested in Yorkshire or the history of veterinary medicine should really read James Herriot, preferrably beginning with All Creatures Great and Small but not forgetting in time All Things Wise and Wonderful.