Charles Holmes Bartlett was born at Painswick, Gloucestershire on 18 November 1913. To understand Charles's character fully we must look back to his father Reginald who was ordained into the Congregational Ministry in Bristol in 1905 and within a few months was working as a Missionary in New Guinea, where he spent 35 years helping to stamp out cannibalism from Papua and Samoa. Charles Bartlett was educated at Warwick School, Christ's College, Cambridge and Bristol Medical School, where he qualified in 1938, and was a house surgeon in Bristol until December 1939. He joined the Navy in 1940 and served through the war till December 1945, when he had the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander in the Fleet Air Arm. He obtained the Fellowship in 1946 and, after a year in Kent, he returned to Bristol as a surgical registrar in November 1947. He worked at the Royal Infirmary in the newly formed genito-urinary department where he came under the influence of A W Adams and later, of Ashton Miller, who established the Bristol Centre. In February 1949 Charles Bartlett moved to Southmead Hospital as senior surgical registrar; he was the first surgical registrar, and helped to establish the surgical side when the hospital came to be a fully equipped hospital under the South-Western Regional Hospital Board. In 1950 Bartlett obtained the post of consultant general surgeon to Frenchay Hospital which was to become a general hospital. Until that time it had the regional units in special branches of surgery only; Bartlett inaugurated the first general surgical beds. The success of the surgical departments at both Southmead and Frenchay Hospitals was ensured by his character and capacity for hard work. After sixteen years he became chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee of Frenchay Hospital in 1956, but six months later he had his first attack of coronary thrombosis; when he was allowed to take up duty three months later he had to reduce his work load. Charles Bartlett was a general surgeon, though he loved urology in particular. He wrote little, but was an excellent teacher. His wife, Ann Barbara Cousins, qualified at Bristol in 1949 and had been his house surgeon; she survived him with three daughters and a son. Bartlett died on 4 October 1969.