James Herriot has already established himself among best-selling country writers.  His books have wit and a generous warmth which few people can resist.

Readers of If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet will know that there is more to the life of a country vet than just driving round the farms; there is the day-to-day contact with vivid and unusual characters, both human and animal.  In Let Sleeping Vets Lie we meet old Mrs. Donovan, the amateur animal doctor whose rescue of a fine dog from starvation and neglect illumines the rest of her life; Carmody, the brilliant veterinary student who finds in his brief visit to the Dales that the harsh realities of country practice can cut the biggest man down to size.  Among the animals are Monty, the bull with the ungrateful nature, Herbert the irrepressible cast-off lamb and Boris the puma-like bully of the Bonds' cat-crammed household. 

These and many others colour the days of young James Herriot, the city boy among the Dalesmen, struggling to establish himself in his hard profession in highest Yorkshire.  Farmers aren't inclined to let sleeping vets lie very securely in their beds when cows are calving and ewes lambing and too many of his tasks had to be done in the small hours of darkness.  The young vet takes us with him as he works through the seasons, freezing on the bare hillsides in winter, glorying in the sunshine and the sweet air of summer.  And though we share his worries when things go wrong it is mostly a tale of laughter; about his embarrassing moments at the agricultural show, his first experience of home-made wine, his stumbling attempts to woo Helen, the farmer's daughter to whom he lost his heart in his previous book It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet.

His home life, too, is never dull with the fellowship of his two colleagues, Siegfried Farnon his dynamic unpredictable boss and Siegfried's younger brother Tristan, who brings his own style of living to Skeldale House.

Those readers who are fascinated by the relationship of humans and animals will savour this chronicle fo a vet's dep involvement with his patients and their richly varied owners; and lovers of the wild countryside in the Yorkshire Dales which form the magnificent backcloth to his book.

From the dust jacket