Ronald Ludlow Benison was born on 22 November 1908. He was educated at Cambridge University and St Bartholemew's Hospital, London where he qualified in 1934. In due course he was appointed consultant surgeon to the Wolverhampton Group of Hospitals. Ronald Benison had a distinguished academic record which was followed by active service in the second world war with the First Army. His account of surgery under fire on the Anzio beachhead was hair-raising. He was a big man with great girth, but his surgical technique was gentle and he possessed an almost infallible gift for performing, the right operation bearing in mind all the human and clinical implications involved. He married Eileen, a doctor and they had five children, of whom three followed their parents into medicine. He gave tremendous happiness to his family and friends despite many years of poor health. He seemed to lead a charmed life, for he survived medical catastrophes which greatly exercised the ingenuity of his surgical and anaesthetic colleagues. In spite of troublesome arthritis he played golf until he no longer could hold a club or walk the distance because of knees arthritic from insults they had received when playing in the Bart's first rugby team. He also braved the seas at his beloved Abersoch, sailing in very small boats, which like their owner, seemed immune from almost inevitable disaster. Ronald Benison's final choice was a massive heart operation rather than to endure a lingering death from heart failure. This operation seemed to be successful when the end suddenly came on 14 December 1976.