William (Bill) Tandy was born on 9 September 1904, one of the three sons of W S Tandy, a jeweller, and Ann, née Hickman. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. After qualification in 1927 he worked as a surgical registrar at the General Hospital in Birmingham and also in Manchester, where he met his future wife. From 1934 to 1939 he worked as surgeon in charge of the Friends' Hospital in Itarsi, Central India. He was a Quaker and a pacifist but served as doctor to the local Home Guard in the second world war. He had married Dr Mary Isabel MacIntosh MB BS in 1930, and she worked with him in India until he returned to England. They had two children - a daughter, Mary Brown, a tutor/counsellor with the Open University, and a son, William Robert, who qualified as a doctor but died in 1967. After his first wife died in 1972 he married a second time to Anne McNeill, who had been matron of the Dilke Hospital in Cinderford. Bill Tandy took up general practice in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and also worked as assistant surgeon at Lydney and the Dilke Memorial Hospitals. He was a forthright and independent character who understood the foibles and ways of the local people in the Forest of Dean, who in their turn accepted and respected him. At one time he intended to put himself forward as a Liberal candidate in a forthcoming election but he withdrew due to pressure of work. His other interests included angling for the disabled, and the Samaritans; he also published two books, *Doctor in the forest* in 1978 and *The ever-rolling stream*. He retired to Monmouth in Gwent and celebrated his 90th birthday in 1994, having become very much a local legend. He died aged 91 on 25 July 1995, survived by his daughter, Mary.