Robert John McNeill Love was born in Devonport on 2 May 1891. His father, Joseph Boyd Love, JP, was an Ulsterman who came to England virtually penniless though he eventually built up a substantial and highly successful warehousing firm in Plymouth, and was mayor of that city at the time of Robert's birth. His mother, Elizabeth Caroline Coleman, was the daughter of a local farmer. At one time the family lived at 'Outlands', a house in Devonport formerly owned by Scott of Antarctic fame and destroyed in the second world war. One of Robert's cherished childhood memories was of being held up to see Queen Victoria during her Diamond Jubilee visit to Devonport. After education at Devonport High School and Taunton School, Somerset, he went to the London Hospital Medical College, qualifying MRCS LRCP, and graduating MB BS London in 1914. He served in the RAMC throughout the first world war in India, the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia, latterly as a surgical specialist. He always expressed his indebtedness to George Grey Turner, of Newcastle, who was his commanding officer in Mesopotamia. On demobilization in 1919 he was house surgeon at the London and resident surgical officer at Poplar Hospital, completing his Final FRCS in 1920 and his London mastership in the following year. Later, in 1938, he was elected to the Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons and he also supported the International College of Surgeons. In the early years of his training and as first assistant at the London he acknowledged the inspiration of Hugh Lett, Malcolm Rigby and Russell Howard. During this period a fellow chief assistant at the London was Hamilton Bailey; when neither of them managed to get on the staff there the consultants at the Royal Northern Hospital were astute enough to invite them both to join their staff in 1930. There followed a long spell of fruitful collaboration heralded by publication of their *Short practice of surgery* in 1932, a book which was to reach its sixteenth edition at the time of McNeill Love's death and which was translated into Italian, Spanish and Turkish. Love also published a book on the appendix and *Surgery for nurses* which ran to three editions. 'Robbie' as he was affectionately known, was a born teacher and an enthusiastic surgical tutor throughout the whole of his professional life. He welcomed postgraduate and undergraduate students at his clinics, and in the operating theatre, making much use of mnemonics and broad classifications to simplify the learning process. He was very much a general surgeon with particular interest in the biliary tract and the thyroid gland. He was one of the first to use pre-operative cholangiography in this country; but he also regarded himself as very much one of the old school of surgeons. He often said that, having been brought up in the days when it could be prejudicial to spend more than an hour working in the abdomen, he found it hard to adjust to the slower and more precise operating conditions permitted by modern anaesthesia. He was also on the staff of the Metropolitan, the City of London Maternity, the Mildmay Hospital and the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases. After his retirement from the Royal Northern staff in 1956, and following the death of Hamilton Bailey, two reconstructed theatres were named after them. Robert Love was a loyal supporter of the College, serving on the Court of Examiners for six years, latterly as its Chairman. He was on the Council from 1945 to 1953 and decided not to put up for a second period of office. He was also a Hunterian Professor and Erasmus Wilson demonstrator, and instituted a medal and prize to be awarded to members of the staff, other than officers of the College, who had served for forty years. He also funded awards for those who had served for 15 and 25 years. Outside his College and hospital activities he was a Fellow of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland; Honorary Fellow of the Medical Society of London; Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a liveryman of the Barbers' Company. He was a commissioner of the Boy Scouts, having been a keen and enthusiastic scoutmaster at Poplar in his early days. Indeed, at that time, he had spent his entire savings of £500 to purchase Goffs Oak, a delightful camping site in Hertfordshire which is still used by the Scouts and Guides. Another vital activity on behalf of his medical and dental colleagues was his directorship of the Medical Sickness Annuity and Life Assurance Society from 1928 to 1973, and its chairmanship for the last 32 of those years. The impressive progress of that organisation and its reputation of integrity were in no small measure due to his leadership and shrewd commonsense. McNeill Love was twice married: first to Dorothy Borland in 1930, and secondly, after her death in 1961, he married Rhoda Mackie, a clergyman's widow, in the following year. He had two children by his first wife: a son who tragically died of Hodgkin's disease, aged 23, and a daughter who trained as a nurse and later became head of the department of sociology at the North London Polytechnic. In 1982 his daughter was awarded a life peerage in the name of Baroness Cox. Robert was a lover of country life, a staunch conservationist and an active Vice-President of the Hertfordshire Society. Having inherited a farm from his mother's family in Devon, he later bought Seward's Farm, near Brickendon, in Hertfordshire, where his son, but for his untimely death, would have taken over management. But Robert himself was no mean farmer and had a reputation as the quickest gelder in the county. Contemporary members of the Court and Council, as well as his hospital surgical colleagues, will recall the celebrated farm suppers served in a marquee. He was a most hospitable and kindly man, a devout churchman and communicant at Brickendon and formerly churchwarden at Potters Bar. He died on 1 October 1974, of an inoperable carcinoma of the stomach which first manifested itself by the appearance of hepatic secondaries. He had attended monthly dinners at the College until a short while before his death, sensibly declined any elaborate investigation, and characteristically kept the precise nature of his illness from his relatives until a short time before his death.