Bryan Brooke pioneered the surgical management of inflammatory bowel disease, especially that of ulcerative colitis. He was born on 21 February 1915 in Croydon, the son of a numismatist. Following initial schooling at Bradfield College he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for which he retained a great affection throughout his life. He developed an interest in rowing and for many years of his subsequent professional career would disappear for a spell each spring to coach the College eight. His clinical training was undertaken at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He commenced his surgical training, became FRCS in 1942 and was chief surgical assistant at Bart's. He joined the RAMC in 1944 as a specialist and became a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a surgical division. After demobilisation, he decided to follow a career in academic surgery, then in its infancy. After a year in Aberdeen, he was appointed senior lecturer to F A R Stammers in the recently established professorial surgical unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Seldom can the styles of two men have been so different. Alan Stammers, with his distinguished appearance and erect military bearing, had an established reputation as a surgeon and an impressive record as a successful Brigadier consultant surgeon to the Eighth Army during the second world war. He was also something of a traditionalist. Brooke, on the other hand, was the talented young man of whom much was expected. He had a very complex personality, wherein high intelligence and a robust, irrepressible, frequently irreverent sense of humour were combined with natural ability and a demanding and enquiring mind. An exuberant extrovert, he scathingly rejected anything he considered to be bogus or second rate and was a convinced anti-dogmatist, who constantly challenged every imaginable precept. He never failed to put his point of view with vigour and clarity, although this did not endear him to some of his more senior colleagues, who found his style of conversation hard to accept. He possessed the almost unique attribute of being able to arouse, almost simultaneously, a sense of utter frustration on the one hand, combined with regard and affection on the other. At times his surgical exuberance would have tried the patience of a saint, but it is greatly to Stammers' credit that, despite occasional strains in their relationship, he constantly gave Brooke his unqualified support and encouragement, and it was under his aegis that Brooke made his outstanding contribution to the management of ulcerative colitis. Lionel Hardy, together with his associates Trevor Cooke and Clifford Hawkins, was keen to initiate a trial of the recently introduced adherent Koenig-Rutzen bag in patients for whom an ileostomy had been contemplated but largely rejected because of its unacceptability. Thus it was that the Birmingham group, and a few like-minded colleagues in other centres, were rapidly able to demonstrate that an ileostomy utilising the adherent device, combined with staged colectomy and subsequently proctocolectomy, produced outstandingly successful results which completely revolutionised the outlook for patients suffering from this erstwhile fearsome disorder, from one of continual misery and early death, to one of the enjoyment of a normal life in all respects. Brooke also devised a simple eversion ileostomy, later adopted world-wide, which obviated many of the complications previously associated with this procedure. Brooke's instinctive awareness of the problems encountered by his patients in this brave new world led him to found the Ileostomy Association in 1956 and he was elected its first President. Brooke was a popular if unorthodox teacher of undergraduates, but it was on the younger surgeons in training that he made the most substantial impact. They revelled in the exciting but friendly ambience that pervaded his unit and most of them were encouraged to participate in a research project, which Brooke considered to be an essential component of training. In addition to its popularity with UK graduates, Brooke's burgeoning international reputation attracted many other young surgeons from all over the world, especially Australia, to work on his unit. They always recalled with gratitude the contribution that their association with this extraordinary man had made to their respective careers. Practically all his registrars became consultant surgeons, several of them professors, and one a subsequent President of the College. Brooke was both hurt and bitterly disappointed when he was not chosen to succeed Stammers when he retired in 1962, but the next year he was appointed the first professor of surgery at St George's Hospital. He entertained high hopes for this, but sadly these were dashed when the anticipated prospects failed to materialise. His senior colleagues found the presence of an energetic and unconventional academic in their midst disquieting, whilst Brooke felt isolated and constrained by the prevailing atmosphere. He never regained in London the standing that he had held in Birmingham. Paradoxically his international reputation flourished and he was in steady demand to participate in international meetings and as a visiting professor, especially in America and Australia, where he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1977. He was an external examiner to several UK universities, including Birmingham and Cambridge, a Hunterian Professor and Chairman of our Court of Examiners. He published several textbooks and numerous articles: his style and use of language were elegant and apposite. He was a demanding editor, and his contributors became familiar with his insistence on substantial and sometimes repeated revisions before an article was deemed acceptable. Brooke's persona was such that he had diverse interests outside his professional life. He was deeply and inquisitively interested in people, from any walk of life, and in all aspects of education, which he considered to be of crucial importance. He was characteristically critical of many of the modern trends, especially those in medical education, which he thought threatened the whole ethos of medicine. He was a skilled potter, an enthusiastic and able painter with a vivid sense of colour, and a craftsman carpenter. It seemed apt that the altar rails that he designed and made for his local church bore silent testimony at his funeral service. Brooke married Naomi Mills in 1940 and she and their three daughters, Marian, Nicola and Penny, and eight grandchildren, survive him, as does Diana, his companion of later years, who nursed him so devotedly throughout his protracted final illness. He died on 18 September 1998.