The really funny thing is, James Herriot was an obscure Scots soccer player. The man who took his name as a pseudonym was bestselling author and eventual (if highly unlikely) cross-Atlantic multimedia sensation James Alfred 'Alf' Wight, in reality as well as in fiction the archetypal Kindly Vet. Thus almost singlehandedly the reason why there seem to be so many of them around in media these days. In 1979 a nonfiction companion volume, James Herriot's Yorkshire, fleshed out the world of the books in detail.