All Creatures Great and Small (franchise) "James Herriot", and are set in the fictional town of "Darrowby", based on a combination of Thirsk, Richmond, Leyburn and Middleham.. In the books James Herriot work with fellow veterinary surgeons, Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, based on real-life counterparts, "Donald Sinclair" and his brother "Brian Sinclair" respectively. Wight also used the name "Helen Alderson" for his wife, Joan Danbury. In America the books were collected as pairs into omnibus volumes, as the publisher felt they were too short to publish independently. The title chosen for the first book in the series "All Creatures Great and Small" (and subsequently one of
All Creatures Great and Small (TV series) at all like that, but when we'd really got into it and were producing them at high speed, his friends used to come to me and say, 'You've got him, that's him.'" Upon first meeting Davison, Christopher Timothy joked to Bill Sellars, "Too tall, re-cast!" Davison was concerned: "I thought, 'What if they suddenly noticed I was quite a bit taller than Robert Hardy?'" Timothy continued: "He thought I meant it. He was horrified that I was trying to get him re-cast. I was in no position to do that and I wouldn't have done that joke for the world