When he was a small boy, Luke’s mother gave him a copy of a James Herriot book with the inscription: ‘One day you might write a book like this’ …

The Vet: my wild and wonderful friends is TV vet Luke Gamble’s collection of heart-warming tales of his life as an idealistic and naïve vet in his first year of practice in the West Country.

‘A gamut of emotions; laughter, serious weeping, but always enjoyable!‘  Clarissa Dickson Wright

‘Vet school provides you with the fundamentals, but there are things you’ll never learn until you’re out there, on the job, being mauled by a lovelorn donkey or running round in circles with a particularly truculent goose. 

One of the most novel bits of vetting I was to learn in my first two months of practice was that it is actually illegal to release a grey squirrel back into the wild. 

Not quite as interesting as the urban myth that the seemingly benign daddy long-legs has a bite, which – if it had a mouth big enough to actually nip you, could kill a grown man in seconds – but nevertheless, still something I had to learn.’

The Vet is published by Two Roads Books and is available to buy in Waterstones and Amazon UK.