January | 2018 | Wetherby and Boston Spa Men's Forum

On a cold and icy Wednesday morning on the 17^th of January 40 members braved the weather to hear the Forum’s guest speaker John Gilleghan MBE.

John was entertaining us for the fifth time; this time his subject was The Story of James Herriot, the vet from Thirsk whose real name was James Alfred Wight who had adopted his nom- de-plume for his very successful series of books about the life of a Yorkshire Dales vet.

All the main characters in the books were based on real people but were given fictitious names and the setting for the stories, the town of Darrowby was loosely based on Thirsk.

John has personally researched the lives of Alfred Wight and his family and obtained copies of many of their photographs which he shared with us in the form of a slide show with musical accompaniment.

The books were adapted for two films and a very successful television series of 91 episodes and details of these featured in John’s presentation.

John also introduced us to the James Herriot Museum in Thirsk which has recently re-opened after refurbishment.

Mike Earle thanked John Gilleghan for a very entertaining talk which brightened up a miserable day.

The Forum resumed its regular Wednesday morning meetings on the 10^th of January after the Christmas break with a talk by guest speaker Geoff Queen from Kettlewell.

Geoff titled his talk Dam Yangtze, a play on words to describe two visits he and his wife made to the Chinese Yangtze River at the time when a giant dam was being constructed which changed the geography of the area in many ways.

He started with a list of statistics about China including its population (1.25 billion) which is one fifth the population of the world. One city has a population of 30 million whilst a settlement of 4 million is regarded as a town.

The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world and the dam was built at a location called the Three Gorges, regarded as particularly beautiful, and involved the displacement of over a million people.

Geoff illustrated his talk with a slide show. Unfortunately the weather had not been kind to him although that and the polluted atmosphere highlighted the devastation caused by the dam to the existing towns and cities.

Geoff also visited the Great Wall, Beijing and the terra-cotta soldiers at Xian and at the end of his talk he invited those forum members who had visited China to share their impressions.

Mike Earle thanked Geoff Queen for his informative talk.

Geoff donates his speaker’s fees to the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.