Giles Romanes was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the Royal Eye Infirmary, Weymouth. He was born in Dublin on 8 December 1918. His father, Francis John Romanes, was of independent means; his mother was Doris Helena MacNaughton Romanes née Wright. He was educated at Eton and then Pembroke College, Cambridge. From 1939 to 1940, he was a private in the RAMC. He went on to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, Paddington and qualified with the conjoint examination in 1945. He was a house surgeon to Christopher Patrick Sames and a house physician to L P E Laurent. He was then a registrar in the spinal unit at Park Prewett Hospital in Basingstoke in the Emergency Medical Services, and was subsequently a registrar to R W Rycroft and Sir Harold Gillies at Rooksdown House, Basingstoke. He then became a house surgeon at the Royal Eye Hospital, St George’s Circus, London. From 1960 to 1983 he was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the Royal Eye Infirmary, Weymouth. He was later involved in setting up the Winterbourne Hospital in Dorchester. He wrote 12 papers (six jointly), and a chapter in Rowe and Killey’s *Fractures of the facial skeleton* (Edinburgh, London, E & S Livingstone). He was president of the section of ophthalmology at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1981. Outside medicine, Romanes had a lifelong interest in steam traction engines. He owned a Wallis and Steevens traction engine he called Goliath, which he drove in local carnival processions, and was director of the Great Dorset Steam Fair. He was a member of the National Traction Engine Trust and president in the trust’s 50th anniversary year. In fine weather, he flew his private vintage aeroplane and made several trips abroad. In 2003, he was the oldest pilot in the UK to commemorate the century of powered flight by the Wright brothers. In 1943, he married Constance Margaret Gee. They had two daughters and a son. Predeceased by his son (in 1994) and his wife (in 2011), Giles Romanes died on 14 April 2016 at Chiddingstone, Kent. He was 97.