James Llewellin Digby Roberts was born on 15 July 1912 at Kalimpong, India, where his father was a medical missionary. His early years were spent in India, where a favourite family pastime was butterfly hunting on horseback: the superb family collection, which his father initiated, was to become a lifelong hobby. He went to England to be educated at King's School, Ely, and St Bartholomew's Hospital. After posts at Bart's and Princess Beatrice Hospital he took the FRCS in 1939. Then came war service, first in the Middle East and West Africa, then as surgeon to the Parachute Brigade, Airborne Division as Lieutenant-Colonel. After the war he decided to go into general practice in Hove to join a well-established private practice. Digby was a cultured, warm, good-humoured man who generated affection and respect wherever he went. He was widely read and had many interests. He was a church-warden of St John's Church, Hove. He was ADMS to 44 (Home Counties) Division of the Territorial Army and at the time of his death medical officer to the Sussex Army Cadet Force, TAVR. He was also an officer of the Order of St John, and medical officer to the Police Convalescent Home, Hove. He refereed for, and was later chairman of the Brighton and Hove Hockey Club, and he was founder-chairman of the Hove Civic Society. Among other offices he had been treasurer of the Brighton and Cuckfield Division of the BMA for the last ten years. He was a founder member of the Sussex Postgraduate Medical Centre and financial secretary to the Brighton and Sussex Medico-Chirurgical Society. In 1952 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and was provost of the South-east England faculty from 1969 to 1971. A particular interest of his was the Innominate Society, a small medical club holding its meetings in members' homes in rotation, the host for the evening delivering a paper. He married Miss Dod in 1939 and they had a son and daughter. He died on 31 January 1977, aged 64 years.