Desmond Laurence Bond Farley was a consultant surgeon at the Royal North, Highlands General, Wood Green and Southgate hospitals, London. He was born in London on 30 January 1921, the son of Laurence George Farley of the Indian Army, and Isabelle Beatrice Farley née Bond. He was educated at the Pilgrim's School at Winchester, where he was a chorister. He then went to Westminster School on an Ellershaw school scholarship, and on to St Mary's Hospital to study medicine, qualifying in 1944. He held junior posts at St Mary's and Hillingdon Hospital, and was then a senior house surgeon on the neurosurgical unit, Manchester Royal Infirmary. From 1947 to 1950 he was a surgeon in the RAF, serving two years in Singapore and attaining the rank of squadron leader. Following his demobilisation, he became an assistant on the surgical unit back at St Mary's, and was subsequently a senior surgical registrar at Great Ormond Street. Just prior to being appointed to his consultant posts he was a resident surgical officer at St Mark's Hospital, London. He listed Arthur Dickson Wright, Sir Denis Browne, Sir Clifford Naunton Morgan, Grey Turner and Sir Geoffrey Jefferson among those surgeons who particularly influenced him. Outside medicine he was president of the north east branch of the Southgate Conservative Association. He was interested in skiing, music and flying. Once he retired, in 1984, he returned to Winchester and became a volunteer at Winchester Cathedral, where he 'reinvigorated' the voluntary guides and instigated the tower tours. In 1961 he married a Miss Turner. They had two sons and a daughter. Desmond Laurence Bond Farley died on 24 November 2011, aged 90.