Nicholas Crosbie Roles was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Berkshire. He was born in London in 1933. His father, Francis Crosbie Roles, was a consultant physician at Bart's. His mother, Joan Crace-Calvert, was the daughter of a physician. Nicholas was educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge, and followed his father and grandfather to St Bartholomew's. He was house physician and house surgeon at Bart's, and was greatly influenced by John Hosford's meticulous technique. After finishing a year on the house, he did his National Service in the Colonial Medical Service in Kenya. There he became interested in the tribal surgery of the nineteenth century and wrote a paper in the *East African Medical Journal*. On his return to England, he took up orthopaedics and was successively orthopaedic registrar at Ashford Hospital and the Hammersmith, and finally senior orthopaedic registrar to the Windsor and Royal Free Hospital groups, to which he was appointed a consultant. At the peak of his career in 1988 he required a new mitral valve. The pig valve became infected and he had to undergo an emergency operation to fit a mechanical valve implant. Thereafter he was plagued by problems with the anticoagulants and recurrent alteration of consciousness. He resigned from the NHS and built a new and successful career as a medico-legal expert, specialising in whiplash injuries. He married Wendy Donalson, then a medical student, in 1959. She qualified the following year. They both enjoyed music - they sang and played the piano. They also played tennis and bridge, went skiing in the winter, restored a farmhouse in the Pyrenees, and made two trips to the Himalayas. In 1996 he had a small melanoma removed. Four years later he developed breathlessness from multiple metastases for which chemotherapy was given, which he endured with his usual stocism. He left three children and four grandchildren.