Cyril Edward Beare was born in Newton Abbot, Devonshire, on 24 May 1902, the sixth child of Samuel Beare, an agricultural engineer, and Alice Austin Beer, whose father had been *The Times'* correspondent in the Crimean War. His brother, Stanley (qv *Lives* 1974-82) a consultant surgeon in Woking, was elected a Fellow in 1947, having been a Member for more than twenty years. His nephew and great-nephew are also Fellows. Beare was educated at Newton Abbot Grammar School, from which he won a scholarship to Blundells, where he won many prizes and the entrance scholarship to Middlesex Hospital Medical School. There he demonstrated anatomy as a student, won the anatomy prize and qualified in 1925 and, like his brother, became house surgeon to Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor. He obtained the FRCS in 1928. In 1929 he married Gordon-Taylor's theatre sister, Anne Heskett, by whom he had two daughters. He was a surgeon to the Emergency Medical Service at Dorking and later consultant at Redhill Hospital. He was an opponent of the National Health Service, against which he fought in the British Medical Association and later the Fellowship for Freedom in Medicine. His interests outside medicine included gardening and continental travel. He died on 27 May 1994.