James Alfred Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot, the beloved Yorkshire vet and best-selling author known to millions around the world, was born in Sunderland in northeast England in 1916.
He studied veterinary surgery in Glasgow, Scotland, before accepting a position in 1940 at a practice in the market town of Thirsk in North Yorkshire and so his future was set.
Barring a few stints in the Royal Air Force (he was discharged in 1943 after an operation), he would live in the Yorkshire town for the next 50 years, becoming a full partner in the veterinary surgery in 1949 and retiring at the end of the 1980s. In 1941, he married a local girl, Joan
