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All Creatures Great And Small And Non-Chocolate Box Chocolate Box-isms: Wanderings #35/52a

James Herriot-All Creatures Great And Small-2013 book reissues-Tom Cole artwork-A Year In The Country

So, All Creatures Great And Small…

Over the last few years I’ve been slowly reading the various books in the series of James Herriot’s memoirs of his time and life as a country vet, beginning in the 1930s and progressing over the years…

I’ve found them interesting as the television series is a sort of Sunday night, chocolate box, no alarms and no surprises take on such things – nothing wrong with that, a good break and escape is not a bad thing…

However, the books, although not necessarily dark or gritty, present a much more real, visceral life and practice.

Mortality and the very physical nature of the work of a country vet are told in a quite unflinching but not gratuitous manner – this is just how it is.

Curiously, they are still rather restful in nature, despite this realism – sort of chocolate box-ish without being over sweet.

I’ve been rather taken by the covers of the reissues by Tom Cole, which link together to form a set/one image and reflect the passing of time and life rather nicely – again in a sort of chocolate box-ish without being over sweet manner.

 

(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)

Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #253/365: One For Sorrow; Helter skelter, hang sorrow, public minded urgings from times when the lights may well go out of an evening and heading towards Rocket Cottage-isms…

Elsewhere in the ether:
Peruse the book here.

 

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