Jim Moffett was born in Galway in 1904 among people who had witnessed the Irish potato famine. The family then moved to Bromsgrove, where he grew up on a farm and became a keen rider. He received his medical education in Birmingham and qualified in 1929 and after early junior posts specialised in oto-rhino-laryngology. He had been a territorial and joined the RAMC in 1939, took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk and was then posted as ear, nose and throat surgeon and adviser in India and south east Asia where he counted among his patients the mules of the Chindit expedition (which he successfully managed to silence) and Lord Mountbatten (whom he did not!). After the war he was appointed consultant ENT surgeon to the Birmingham United Hospitals. He took early retirement to return to active life as a farmer, and to take up the piano at the age of eighty. He was a talented water-colourist. He died on 12 December 1995, leaving his wife, Ella, one daughter and four sons.