Malcolm Haydon-Baillie was born in Sunderland on 27 August 1906, the elder son of Dr Thomas Cleghorn Baillie, DSc, principal of a technical college and Lily Christine Haydon. He was educated at Whitgift Grammar School and St Edmund's College, Ware, before entering King's College, London, and King's College Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1930. After early hospital appointments he was EMS surgeon at St John's Hospital, Lewisham, and at the County General Hospital, Worksop, throughout the war years. In the years after the war he became medical superintendent and assistant surgeon in the ENT department at Worksop and also served as a member of Worksop Borough Council from 1960 to 1969. Finally he was appointed department medical officer in ENT at Nottinghamshire Area Health Authority. His favourite recreations were, he said, "politics and squash". He married Edith Agnes Willies in 1939, by whom he had three sons, and Irene Blackwell in 1949 by whom he had one son. He died on 23 March 1984, aged 77.