William Harold Alfred Dodd, the eldest of three sons and second of five children of Alfred Leward Dodd and Annie Elizabeth (née Marshall), was born at Crewe, Cheshire, on 13 March 1899. He was educated at St Michael's Church School, Coppenhall, Crewe, and at Crewe Grammar School. From September 1917 until March 1919 he was initially a cadet, rising to the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, later RAF. He then went to Liverpool University as T Williams Prizeman and graduated in 1922 with a distinction in surgery. He was appointed house surgeon to Professor Thelwall Thomas, and house physician to Professor Hill Abram, at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary. While surgical registrar at that Infirmary from 1924 to 1926, he demonstrated anatomy in 1924, and operative surgery in 1925, also serving as Captain RAMC (TA) from 1923 to 1931. In later life he recorded his appreciation of the help and inspiration he had received from Thelwall Thomas, Cecil Joll, Sir Lancelot Barrington-Ward, E T C Milligan and Professors Adam and von Lichetenberg of Budapest. On his election to the honorary surgical staff of King George V Hospital, Ilford, the rest of his working life was spent in the London area, with subsequent appointments at Princess Louise Hospital for Children, the Royal London Homoeopathic and the Royal Hospital, Richmond. He rapidly established a high reputation as a general surgeon and was a skilful operator with a flourishing private practice. Dating from his days in Liverpool he had a lifelong interest in the then unfashionable specialty of varicose veins. Having previously written on this subject he then, in 1956, in collaboration with a much younger colleague, Frank Cockett, of St Thomas's Hospital, published *The pathology and surgery of the veins of the lower limb*, a textbook which had an immense and worldwide influence on the teaching and practice of this poorly comprehended subject. His enthusiasm, once fired, never faltered and there followed a steady flow of papers. He lectured widely in the United Kingdom, the USA, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and published further papers on proctology and the treatment of hernia. Harold Dodd was active in many other fields. He was honorary secretary and later President of the Section of Proctology of the Royal Society of Medicine; President, and later treasurer, of the Regional Hospital Consultants' Association; Governor of Epsom College from 1950 to 1972; a councillor for the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund for two spells and chairman of its management committee. A devout man, who was observed to say many a prayer for his patients in the theatre, he was an ever courteous and conscientious person, and a warm and steadfast friend to a generation of the Boys' and Girls' Grammar School in Crewe, Cheshire, and at Bury, Lancashire. He had married Mary (née Bond) in 1945 and they had one son, Dudley, a solicitor. Following his retirement he became a deacon at All Souls' Church, Langham Place, in 1970, and was ordained as an Anglican priest in June 1971. When he died, aged 88, on 29 March 1987, he was survived by his wife and son.