Laurence ('Laurie') Read was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch, Worcestershire. He initially became a teacher, during which time he spent two years in Sierra Leone, West Africa. He then took up a place at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School as a mature medical student, qualifying in 1971 at the age of 35. Deciding to specialise in orthopaedics and trauma surgery, he was a registrar at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington and then a clinical lecturer in orthopaedics and an honorary senior registrar at Hope Hospital, Salford, where he worked under Charles Galasko. In 1986 he was appointed as a consultant at the Alexandra Hospital, a new district general hospital in Redditch, where he helped establish the trauma and orthopaedic department. He retired from the NHS and private practice at the age of 67 and went back to Sierra Leone, where he worked for a mission hospital and treated many trauma cases. He also visited his old school, which had been burnt down in the civil war, and raised money to rebuild and restock it. He then spent a further two years in Cambodia, where he treated trauma patients and adolescents and adults with club feet. Laurence Read died on 14 May 2014 from complications of renal cancer. He had a wife, Sue.