Born in Sandwich, Kent, on 30 September 1910, John Richard Rose's father, William Richard Rose, was a wholesale grocer, JP, county councillor and was twice Mayor of Sandwich. His mother was Beatrice Matilda Paragreen, a musician and poet, and a governor of St Thomas's Hospital. He was educated at Sir Roger Marwood's School, from which he won a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge. From Queens' he won an exhibition to St Thomas's Hospital, where he was much influenced by Cyril Nitch, Romanis and Mitchiner. Barrett was his surgical tutor. After qualifying, he became a house surgeon at St Thomas's and then went to China as a surgeon to the Methodist Missionary Society. He then joined the Hong Kong Volunteers in 1939. There he was interned in a Japanese civilian camp near Canton from 1942 to 1945. On being released, he returned to his missionary work in China for another four years, becoming Professor of Surgery to the Canton Medical School (Lingan University) in 1947, and Chairman of the South China Medical Relief Society. He became an expert in ancient Chinese scripts and watercolour painting. He was then sent to Sierra Leone, where he qualified as a witch doctor in the Mende Tribe in 1957, a life appointment. He then returned to the UK, where he was a GP in Kent and Cumbria. He married Dorothy Barritt, and had one son, Michael, who also became a surgeon, and two daughters, Janet and Alison. This marriage ended in divorce and he later married Elizabeth Loyns and had two sons, Richard and Stephen. He published *A Church born to suffer* (London, Cargate Press) in 1951, a history of the first 100 years of the Methodist Church in South China, and an autobiography *Traveller's joy* in 1991. He died on 6 November 1998.