Charles Paul Wilson was born on 17 August 1900 and received his medical education at the Middlesex Hospital, qualifying with the Conjoint Diploma in 1922. He obtained the FRCS in 1925 and then specialized in otolaryngology. He was appointed a consultant at the Middlesex Hospital in 1930, and in 1945 became the senior surgeon in the department of otolaryngology and director of the Ferens Institute. He was Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1955, and in 1961 gave the Semon Lecture in the University of London. He became a Justice of the Peace in 1962, the year he retired from the Middlesex Hospital. Wilson's profound love and knowledge of anatomy enabled him to devise operative techniques for his own specialty, but that knowledge was not confined to the head and neck for during the second world war he was one of two consultant surgeons in a team which was on duty on alternate nights to deal with air raid casualties, and he appeared equally capable of dealing with injuries of all parts of the body. In 1924 Paul Wilson married Margaret Cameron, and when he died in Middlesex Hospital on 12 March 1970 after a long illness his wife and their three children survived him.