I only ask because I was watching All Creatures Great and Small earlier and looked up James Herriot on Wikipedia and was surprised to find out that his name was actually Alf Wight.
He couldn't use this as Vets were forbidden to advertise and I wanted to know why this was.
There were laws that prevented many professions from advertising (the growth of 'ambulance chasing' adverts for SUE-THEM-4-U-type law firms is a symptom of deregulation a few years ago.)
My missus is an avid reader of many book genres, including biographies/auto-biographies, and she's got a few by Alf, sorry, James, so I will see what she has to say and report back.