HOORAH! WINNER!
Yes
Roshanarose, it's Dr Doolittle by Hugh Lofting. As a child, I acquired these books from my cousin, and loved them dearly, although I don't think I understood most of the jokes. Even Madeleine liked them when she was little - they're about the only books that we've both enjoyed.
Lofting was born in Maidenhead (Berkshire) in 1886, and studied civil engineering and architecture at college. He attended MIT but ended up at London Polytechnic. He travelled to Canada as a surveyor and prospector, then worked for railway companies in West Africa & Cuba before settling in New York. He joined the British army in WWI, and began to write and illustrate stories about a kindly animal doctor when he was serving in Flanders and France. he sent these to his children in the US; after the war, on his voyage back to the US, he met a novelist who suggested he tried to publish them.
Dr John Doolittle lives in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh (which doesn't exist but could well - there are lots of villages with names like that in the west country). He has so many pets that they eventually drive his human patients away. so he becomes a vet. He has a parrot called Polynesia who helps him to learn various animal languages. He travels to Africa to help deal with an epidemic amongst the monkey population, and as a reward the monkeys kidnap a pushmi-pullyu (a sort of 2 headed unicorn) and give it to him to take back to the UK, with the idea that he will be able to make money from exhibiting it.
The books were later accused of being racist - the parrot uses racial epithets when speaking of Africans, and in one book there is a black African prince who asks the doctor to bleach his face white. Some of these episodes have been removed or changed in later editions.
This is a link to a very nice biography (with photos):
http://puddleby.tripod.com/author.htmlOver to you, Roshanarose!
Rosemary
