A NEW statue of Yorkshire vet James Herriot will be unveiled next month.

The actor Christopher Timothy, who played Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small, will unveil the statue at Thirsk Racecourse on Saturday, October 4, at a black-tie dinner.

The statue has been commissioned by The World of James Herriot , and also in attendance will be members of Alf Wight’s family, and former Birmingham City goalkeeper Jim Herriot, whose name Alf Wight chose as his pseudonym in 1969. The sculptor Sean Hedges-Finn and Gary Verity, CEO of Welcome to Yorkshire, will also be at the event, which will raise money for The James Herriot Legacy Fund.

Ian Ashton, managing director of the World of James Herriot, said: “The aim is to provide bursaries for people wishing to embark on a career concerning the welfare of animals, and for whom the James Herriot stories may well have been an inspiration.

The launch dinner is an opportunity to support this vision.

The fund has already reached £30,000. The initial aim is to double this figure to £60,000, which would finance the completion of the statue and allow the first bursaries to be allocated.”

James Alfred Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym of James Herriot, became one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century.

His books, a series of stories based on his experiences as a young veterinary surgeon working among the farming community of North Yorkshire, sold in their millions throughout the world. Their great success spawned two feature films in the mid 1970s, followed by a BBC television series, All Creatures Great and Small.

Donations to the fund can be made worldofjamesherriot.org/herriot-news.html