
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 24, 1995                   TAG: 9502240082
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short

BRITISH AUTHOR, VET JAMES HERRIOT DIES

James Herriot, who shared his experiences as a country veterinarian in the best-selling memoir ``All Creatures Great and Small,'' died Thursday in the Yorkshire Dales, where he had ministered to animals for half a century. He was 78.

Herriot died of prostate cancer at his home near Thirsk, said his granddaughter, Emma Page.

``He had been ill for three years but he had borne his illness very patiently and bravely,'' she said.

Herriot - the pen name and alter ego of James Alfred Wight - started writing at age 50 and produced 15 books in the time that he could wrest away from his practice. They sold 50 million copies in 20 countries.

But he continued his veterinary practice long after his books made him famous.

``If a farmer calls me with a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw,'' he once said.

A quiet, modest man with a trace of his Glasgow upbringing in his voice, ``Alf'' Wight kept out of the limelight as best he could.

Despite the pen name and Thirsk's disguise as Darrowby, many fans tracked him down at Skeldale House, the ivy-covered home and office familiar to his readers and viewers of the popular television series based on ``All Creatures Great and Small.''

- Associated Press

by CNB