Talk:James Herriot

A note

Brian Sinclair was never a partner in the veterinary practice of Sinclair and Wight. Brian Sinclair joined the Ministry of Agriculture after the Second World War, and worked there until his retirement. Source: Wight, Jim. (1999). The Real James Herriot: The Authorized Biography. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-8843-4. --67.71.142.7 01:33, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Fact vs. Fiction

This paragraph needs a total rewrite:

Wight's books are only partially autobiographical, and the stories and characters should not be assumed to have happened or existed exactly as related. Contrary to popular belief, many of the stories are based only loosely on real events or people, and thus can be considered primarily fiction. Even when writing accurately of real events and people, Wight frequently employed authorial licence to present them in a manner that bore little relation to the genuine chronology of his life.

Not only does it sound opinionated, but has no basis in actual fact. In The real James Herriot: A memoir of my father, Jim (Wight's son) emphatically denies this very claim. He says that 90% of the stories told are accurate and only dates and names were rearranged for privacy reasons. Either the entire paragraph should be deleted or at the very least we should include Jim's claim in a rewrite. While I understand that Jim is naturally going to be biased, there is no way to verify the truth of the matter and there is certainly no proof that Herriot's work was "primarily fiction." Thoughts? MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 02:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I see that someone has attempted to make a citation for this, though it's incorrect. Still though, I believe the above paragraph requires revision since another book (as mentioned above), which I can also cite says that the books are not fiction. Interesting that user 90.52.83.231 failed to sign in and post here. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 00:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I read the son's book too and he does say that a lot of the stories were from other vet's experiences as well. For example the story about Herriot's ride across the moore during winter with Granville Bennett was someone else's history. It is not unusual for a writer to change a story quite a bit, esp. when it goes thru an editor. Doesn't make it a lie, doesn't make it completely fiction, but is does make it "based on fact". An autobiography is less reliable than a biography anyway for fact-telling b/c nobody can retell their own lives without bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.190.3.115 (talk) 06:14, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The formidable Miss Harbottle never existed. The practice employed a male clerk. Crawiki (talk) 14:05, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The claim that "90% of the stories told are accurate" is potentially misleading. Jim Wight asserts in his own book that the books are "based upon fact", but it's important to note that all he's doing there is refuting the idea that the stories were *entirely* invented. He admits that his father changed names, dates *and events* to make for better stories, and that in many cases while the "theme" of a given story was based on a real incident, the written story was heavily fictionalised. Indeed, later in the book Jim explains that his father freely used real-life events that actually occurred to other vets (including Jim) during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, rewriting them to set them in the 1930s and making himself the protagonist. So a fair proportion of each of the books can legitimately be regarded as fiction, insofar as the stories are based on a kernel of fact but have been adapted and embroidered and, in many cases, did not occur to Alf Wight himself in real life. 86.188.4.196 (talk) 18:02, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Redirect

I think it would have been more appropriate to name this page Alf Wight and have a redirect from James Herriot. After all, the article should be titled after his real name. Inkworldluver (talk) 00:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting point and I would have to agree with you there. James Herriot should remain, but as you say redirect to his true name. I'd take it a step further and say that it still should not be Alf Wight, but James Alfred Wight, his full name. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 02:47, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Family

Herriot had a wife (Helen) children, Jimmie(later became a vet) and Rosie, who became a human doctor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.151.26.120 (talk • contribs) 18:12, 4 February 2004 (UTC)

Wife's real name was Joan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcuk (talk • contribs) 23:39, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW "human doctor" = MD. Medical Doctor as opposed to Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM; U.S.). The article is really spare and does not give any details about whether the practice still exists and whether it's been handed down in the family. We all know his son is/was a vet (is he still alive?) but were any of the grandkids involved in the practice? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.190.3.115 (talk) 06:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jim Wight, the son, wrote a biography of the father and was a consultant for TV series, Young James Herriot. Merits an article himself, surely?Crawiki (talk) 14:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC) Crawiki (talk) 14:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks to User 218.214.77.115 for fixing my error (Darrowby not "Darby"). ~ Dpr 16:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Picture

Might it be better if the picture at the head of the article were of Herriot/Wight instead of the surgery? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.245.73 (talk • contribs) 21:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a free license photo for that? It's a great idea, but we need a picture that we can use. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 02:51, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction

Under "Biography", it says:

"From 1940 until 1942, Herriot served in the Royal Air Force"

But under "Author" it says:

"Wight himself was conscripted in 1942". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.139.186 (talk) 05:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Evidently this was fixed, although the "From" remained for whatever reason which was grammatically incorrect. I fixed that part. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 02:56, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Non relevant links

Whilst doing some research into the locations mentioned in the books I worked my way through the external links and was annoyed and frustrated to find that 2 of them appeared to be jumping on the JH bandwagon by largely advertising tourist attractions with no relevance to the article. I can appreciate the desire to attract tourists, but (mis)using an encyclopedia isn't the way to do it, and is in breach of WikiPedia guidelines. I will remove the offending links, for more info. please refer to Wikipedia:External_links. -- John 12:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Articles and book reviews to use for refs

Here are a few items I found while seeing if the "But It Did Happen to a Vet" article was online. The book reviews in some cases have a bunch of biographical info on Wight.

• Stefan Kanfer. "The Marcus Welby of the Barnyard," TIME, Jun. 29, 1981. (book review)
• William R. Doerner. "How Now, Brown Cow?", TIME, Feb. 19, 1973. (book review - this one doesn't really have much info and the author clearly hadn't read the book closely, thus makes various mistakes, such as thinking Tricki Woo is female)
• Kathleen Adams, Christine Gorman, Lina Lofaro, Michael Quinn, Sribala Subramanian, and Sidney Urquhart. Milestones, TIME, March 6, 1995 (brief obituary).
• Untitled column, TIME, Feb. 27, 1978 (a brief within a larger column)
• Untitled column, TIME, Jan. 15, 1979 (a brief mentioning various people receiving Order of the British Empire titles).

"But It Did Happen to a Vet" appears to be reproduced here with a claim at the bottom "© Time December 14, 1992" even though a search of Time magazine's archives suggest that it wasn't published there. Could there be another publication by that name? Could they have meant The Times? (Seems unlikely.) Lawikitejana (talk) 15:06, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

These are excellent, but even the Milestone obit in Time has errors. He wasn't born in Scotland. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 16:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Request for image

As noted above, I have tagged this as needing a photo. The current photo is not of James Herriot, but the building he worked in which is ridiculous! Do you show pictures of where you work when someone wants to know what you look like? While I agree that a picture of his practice would enhance the article, it shouldn't be where a photo of him is needed. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 11:12, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Writing a draft

I just wanted to notify anyone that I'm presently working on a draft for a rewrite that will be much less confusing and won't read like a timeline... hopefully. I do have a sick mother, so I may have to put it on hold if something happens. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 15:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Hope your mother's improved by now. Above, on this talk page, I listed a few possible refs. It would be good if we could (a) clean out the bits of the "Author" section that appear to be someone's personal attempts at literary critique and (b) add a bit more about the real person. The articles I've read in periodicals suggest that Alf Wight was, like most of us, a complex person; that he struggled with depression; that there's a good bit more to know than what one gleans from the books. Such depth of information is, after all, Wikipedia's goal. Lawikitejana (talk) 21:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

English, Scottish, British?

Was a little surprised to see him described here as English, knowing he was brought up and educated in Scotland, only moving south as an adult, although his English parentage and initial 3 weeks of life may have been significant in self-identification I guess. Would British possibly be preferable in this instance? I have a vague recollection of hearing his voice, still with a Scottish accent although I can't find clips to back this up, not that this fact alone would be definitive. Mutt Lunker (talk) 14:59, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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Notability of Jim Wight

The son, Jim Wight, wrote the biography and helped with TV series Young James Herriot. Merits an article, surely? Crawiki (talk) 14:07, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The books are novels, and most sources agree that about 50 percent of the content was pure fiction.

i'd like to see the tables turned "Great AUthor's books are semi/hemi/demi fiction, being 50% fact." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.49.17.228 (talk) 05:11, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Date/s for RAF service

At present the article reads "Wight enlisted in the RAF in November 1942" (without a source), in other words, post-dating his marriage which was on 5 November 1941. However Graham Lord's 1997 biography states that Alf joined the RAF on 8 April 1941, 7 months before the marriage, and that the version in the books, where "James" receives his call-up papers on 3 October 1942, was a fiction introduced for dramatic effect ("young man dragged suddenly from his lovely pregnant young wife to go off to war..." - Lord, p. 98). Which is correct? Tony 1212 (talk) 18:46, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Redirect (again)

As per the section "Redirect" above (last updated 2008) I actually think there is a fair case to be made for this page to be renamed after Wight's real name i.e. Alf (James Alfred) Wight, since really it is a biography of Wight; if it were a biography of "James Herriot" then some things would be different on account of the differences in life history between the fictional raconteur and the real man. Then "James Herriot" would redirect here... thoughts, anyone? Tony 1212 (talk) 04:27, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Just to unpack this a bit further - conceptually there are 3 entities here: (1) Alf Wight the vet (real name) whose Bio this page is in fact - since it includes things about his early and later life not in the "James Herriot" books; (2) "James Herriot" the author (pen name of A.W.) responsible for the various books under his name; and (3) "James Herriot" the protagonist of the books, whose activities are semi-autobiographical and semi-fictionalised (and deviate sometimes from the historical activities of A.W.) - example being dates of RAF service; nature of wife (in the books she is a farmer's daughter, in reality she was a secretary); details of relationship with Donald Sinclair, ("Siegfried" in the books) - e.g. in the books Siegfried gives a partnership in the practice to James, in reality he had to buy it; in the books they are friends and colleagues to the end, in fact Donald effectively left the practice earlier, having married a rich new wife and having no need to work...

So at present all three are conflated into one page under the name "James Herriot". There are different solutions to this - I am not sure which is best. One might be to combine (1) and (2), either under the name "Alf Wight", or "James Herriot (author)" being the pen name of A.W., then have another for "James Herriot (semi-autobiographical character)" or something else less clumsy, along the same lines, in which relevant distinctions can be made. Or, make everything under "Alf Wight", but teasing out the subtleties a bit further; or just leave as is (everything as "James Herriot"), I don't know - discussion, thoughts welcome. Tony 1212 (talk) 05:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Leave. The Wikipedia Manual of Style covers both options but seems to me to lean towards this page continuing with the pen name. The Wikipedia Pseudonymous Writers category (can't link, for some reason) seems to me to do the same. I think the analysis of @Tony1212 is a good one and leads me to the conclusion that the 2 of the 3 functions of the name are best served by leaving the article titled as it is, that is as James Herriot with a re-direct set up from Alf Wight. In addition, an argument for a change from the status quo should be decisive; and if not the status quo should prevail. In my view, given the OP's argument, and also taking into account the previous discussion, the article should continue with its present name.Emmentalist (talk) 22:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose -- Consider similar pseudonymous people like Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, etc. Naming needs to conform as much as possible for the article naming conventions which are spelt out quite well in WP:CRITERIA. An easy rule of thumb (see WP:COMMONNAME): Would you expect readers to more likely search for Alf Wight or James Herriot? To give you an idea of how contentious and constant a debate this has always been across the encyclopaedia, out of all the policies, guidelines and criteria in Wikipedia, this question got the WP:CRITERIA redirect. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 18:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  OK, thanks for that input. I do recognise that this is the formal "Wikipedia position", even though it conflicts with my subconscious desire to know more about the real "Alf Wight" and less about the slightly fictionalised "James Herriot" persona. Just to be clear - there are some differences in this which I thought might be something of a "special case" - to take the "standard" pseudonymous author (as per the example quoted), "Lewis Carroll" is clearly the same person as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the latter simply writing as the former, but with no separate, eponymous "Lewis Carroll" character in his works. In the present case we have the first situation, agreed, but now also a new "James Herriot" character whose activities and life story do not exactly coincide with those of Wight - hence my slight unease. Nevertheless I will be happy to leave things as they are. Regards Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:34, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Hmm. You could make a stronger case by using the model found in the Barry Humphries and Dame Edna Everage articles. To have a chance at success, though, I'd suggest that you build two articles in draftspace. Create one for Wight and one for Herriot, with the existing article as the core model for Alf. You'll need some very strong sources to support the Herriot article, though, that dissect the character without diving into the author. If they're out there, I can't find them easily (this isn't my bailiwick). I'll tell you that I don't see it likely passing AfD, though. There just does not seem to be 'enough light between' the character and the author to support the split, imo, but you'd have a better shot that way. Renaming this article will, I fear, be a complete non-starter without a well-sourced article for the character himself. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 16:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Last1in Thanks for the comment. As per my last reply, I am now happy to leave things as they are... but maybe the article could at some future point articulate more clearly some of the discrepancies between the writer and his literary alter ego. I have Graham Lord's biography to hand and may do so in the future (or someone else might step in as well!). Cheers Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 17:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)