All Things Bright and Beautiful

The sequel to All Creatures Great and Small continues the adventures of veterinarian James Herriot in a small town in Yorkshire, England After his first day on the job, James Herriot’s mentor warns him that the life of a country veterinarian is full of small triumphs and big disasters, but that he’d never be bored. From night visits to drafty barns during freezing northern England winters, to the beautiful vitality of rural life in the summertime, to the colorful menagerie of animals—and their owners—that pass through his office, Herriot experiences new challenges and joys every day. In these pages, Herriot trains under his eccentric boss Siegfried Farnon in a rustic English village, courts the woman that becomes his wife, and meets the people he would come to write about for a lifetime. “A very warm, very engaging read…. The reader falls totally under his spell.”
—Associated Press “Humor, realism, sensitivity, earthiness; animals comic and tragic; and people droll, pathetic, courageous, eccentric….”
—The Columbus Dispatch
James Herriot (1916–1995) was the pen name of James Alfred “Alf” Wight, an English veterinarian whose tales of veterinary practice and country life have delighted generations. Many of Herriot’s works—including All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All, and Every Living Thing—became international bestsellers and have been adapted for film and television. Though largely fictional, Herriot’s stories rely on numerous autobiographical elements taken from his life in northern England’s Yorkshire County, and they depict a simple, rustic world deeply in touch with the cycles of nature.