Alfred Stuart Howard Walford, the only child of Howard Joseph Walford, a stockbroker, and his wife, Lucy, was born in London on 22 November 1899. After education at Clifton College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he went on to St Thomas's Hospital where he qualified in 1923. During casualty, general house surgeon and ENT house surgeon appointments there he became FRCS in 1925. He succeeded to a consultant post in Cambridge when W H Bowen, honorary consultant surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital, relinquished his ENT sessions there. In his own specialty Walford always acknowledged his indebtedness to Mr W G Howarth and he continued in charge of the Addenbrooke's department until his retirement in 1974. He had joined the Territorial Army RAMC in the spring of 1939 and, during the first two years of the second world war he served as an ENT consultant in 20th General Hospital with the rank of Major. On returning to civilian life he continued in his hospital appointment and was associate lecturer in otorhinolaryngology to the University of Cambridge. He also served on the faculty of medicine and was consulting laryngologist to the Papworth Village Settlement. He served as honorary secretary and Vice-President of the Section of Otology and Laryngology at the Royal Society of Medicine and had been chairman of the medical staff committee at Addenbrooke's. Walford was a hardworking and good humoured man who enjoyed riding and was a keen fly fisherman. He married Phyllis Hart in 1923 and they had a son and daughter. Both the son and one grandson qualified as doctors and when he died in 1979 he was survived by his wife and children.