Roger Parker was an ENT surgeon at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading. He was born on 25 April 1936 and educated at Christ's Hospital. He gained entry to Balliol, Oxford, to read history, but instead did his National Service in the Royal Navy. He spent his last six months in the Navy playing the euphonium in the Blue Jackets Band, the resident band of HMS Victory. Half way into his National Service, he decided on a career in medicine, but needed A levels to get into London University, so he brushed up his French at the Sorbonne and got into Guy's, where his grandfather Tubby Layton was a consultant ENT surgeon. Qualifying early with the LMSSA, his first house job was at Putney, working under Guy Blackburn, Grant Massie and Rex Lawrie. He then returned to Guy's, as children's house physician. He contemplated a career in cardiac surgery and was a thoracic research fellow under Lord Russell Brock, having won the British Heart Foundation research fellowship. He then decided to marry, and tried general practice in Weybridge. This was, he wrote, for him "a disaster", and he decided to take up ENT surgery. After six months at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, he returned to Guy's as a registrar, rotating to Lewisham and Hither Green, before returning to Gray's Inn Road as senior lecturer to Donald Harrison. Here he finished his MS thesis on cardiac transplantation. He was appointed consultant ENT surgeon to the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading. Within a year he had obtained a travelling fellowship to visit America to learn otology. He also learnt the then new technique of laser surgery and, on his return, with help from the Reading Lions Club, he bought the second CO2 laser in the British Isles. An enthusiastic teacher, he continued to work as a part-time senior lecturer in anatomy at Guy's, coaching for the primary and teaching students in the dissecting room. He was on the Court of Examiners of the College. His long association with the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, beginning with its licentiate, continued a family tradition: his great grandfather William Bramley Taylor and grandfather Thomas Bramley (Tubby) Layton had both been Masters. He himself was Master in the millennium year. He had just completed his year in office when he died suddenly on 24 September 2000. He married in 1969 and was subsequently divorced. He leaves three sons and one daughter of this marriage.