Cyril Charles Cookson was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, on 14 November 1906. His father, Charles William, was a treasurer at the Blue Coat School in Walsall and King Edward's Grammar School, Aston, Birmingham. He married Miss Bull in 1937. He studied at Birmingham Medical School passing MB ChB in 1927. He worked as house physician at the Birmingham Nerve Hospital and house surgeon at the Hallam Hospital, West Bromiwich. He then worked as surgical registrar in the Birmingham General Hospital. During his career he worked with B T Rose (qv) Seymour Barling and B H Pidcock. During the second world war he was a surgeon with the EMS. He became consultant surgeon to the Farnborough and Beckenham Hospitals and was honorary consultant in general surgery to the Bromley Group of Hospitals when he died in December 1981. He had been secretary and President of the Bromley division of the BMA, Chairman of the Bromley Group Medical Committee and a member of the management committee of the Bromley Group.