Michael Hubbard was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Glan Clwyd Hospital and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry. He was born on 27 June 1938 in Woburn, Bedfordshire, into a not entirely happy marriage. His father, Geoffrey Owen Hubbard, was a company director; his mother, Margery Hubbard née Meakin, was a housewife. By 1940, the country was bracing itself for a German invasion, and Michael was taken by his paternal grandparents to Canada and the United States. Spending time in Michigan and Montreal, he learned a love of the countryside, and fishing, hunting and skiing. He returned to England in 1946 and, from 1952 to 1956, attended Stowe, where he was beaten for making explosives in the chemistry lab. He had his first teaching experience at school as in those days sixth formers took classes for absent masters. From Stowe, he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge to read medicine with theology as a side subject and also took up rowing. From 1959 to 1962, he was at Middlesex Hospital Medical School. During his house jobs, he teamed up with a bunch of hard-drinking, black-humoured orthopaedic registrars and, realising them to be kindred spirits, entered his chosen specialty. As a trainee, Mike obtained a World Health Organization scholarship to train with Ronald Huckstep in Uganda. One memorable event he was to recount in later years was fixing the multiple fractures of a man brought in by the police after interrogation, only for the police to come back to hospital when the man was recovering so that they could take him back to prison and execute him. 'I'm damned if I'm going to let them undo all my good work,' Mike thought, so he refused to release him, insisting that the patient was part of a medical trial, which would require regular follow-ups for several years. The argument was heated, but eventually the man was returned to the police on an assurance that his sentence would be commuted. Mike's final training was at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital, Oswestry, a connection which was maintained throughout his professional life and well into retirement. In 1973, he took up a post at Glan Clwyd Hospital, with sessions in Oswestry. It was a part of the country that he had always considered to be remarkably beautiful. He became clinical director of orthopaedics, although committee meetings and bureaucracy were not things that came easily. He was much more attuned to teaching, particularly in the operating theatre. He was a fearless surgeon and, in the days before specialisation was the norm, he would happily undertake any sort of orthopaedic surgery, from scoliosis surgery to bone tumour removal. In the latter part of his career, while still maintaining a broad base of lower limb joint replacement surgery, he concentrated particularly on arthroscopic surgery of the knee and joint ligament reconstruction, a subject on which he published several research papers. He was a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association, a member of the British Association for Surgery of the Knee and a member of World Orthopaedic Concern, a charitable organisation supporting orthopaedic surgery in developing countries. He also did a stint as a regional adviser. The trainees were particularly fond of him. He had contacts all over the globe and was often invited on holidays and lecture tours. His children still talk about the frequent visits of doctors from around the world to their house. At one Greek wedding, Mike's performance on the dance floor was so distinctive it led to one guest asking if he worked as an acrobat. There was also an enthusiastic Sikh gathering in the Punjab, after which his host told his daughter, Sam, 'Your father is a great surgeon.' 'How do you know?' she said, 'You haven't seen him operate yet.' 'Ah yes,' he replied 'but we have seen him drink.' Mike's travels around the globe fostered his love of natural history. He was an avid collector of butterflies and moths, a hobby popular in Mike's boyhood, but like collecting birds' eggs, rarely pursued since the 1950s. He would dress for the part when on field trips, with a floppy hat and the inevitable butterfly net. One orthopaedic colleague claims to have glanced out of the window at a conference lecture theatre somewhere near the Equator to observe Mike, dressed in khaki with a pith helmet, leaping around in the bushes of a tropical garden trying to ensnare a huge insect with his net. In keeping with his paradoxical nature, he was also an avid conservationist, and a member of the British Butterfly Conservation Society. A keen game shot, he also supported the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He was an adventurous cook and would tackle game, wild fungi and other exotica at home. When abroad, he would happily tuck into snails, stewed leeches, fermented crab, frogs and brains. Upon my arrival in North Wales, I was invited for supper and, surrounded by Clumber Spaniels, was served smoked goose breast, poached halibut, stewed venison, very old claret warmed on the AGA, and a selection of vodkas kept in the freezer. Although he delighted in playing the role of an English eccentric, Mike was also traditional. At work, he was always immaculately dressed in a three-piece, pinstripe suit with a fresh rose in his button hole. He liked to wear a cravat with casual wear and often sported a deer stalker hat. He spoke in RP (received pronunciation), called colleagues and juniors 'Dear boy', and would often quote from the scriptures or classic literature. He was adventurous. In the winter, he would be shooting or skiing and he loved fast cars. Shortly after having coronary artery stents, he went to recuperate in the Caribbean, where he went scuba diving to the maximum permissible depth 'as a bit of a test', he told me on his return. In 1961, Mike married Barbara Mary Danes, a GP. They had four children - Mark, Paul, Amanda and Daniel. The marriage ended in 1977 and he married Catherine Ann Farmer, a theatre sister. They had two children - Samantha Jane and Charles. He died on 7 November 2017, at the age of 79. His brother, John, summed him up nicely in the eulogy at his funeral '…a loving and stimulating father and grandfather, a staunch and skillful colleague, a formidable intellect, a great sharer of knowledge and experience, a complex, intriguing, entertaining rather special and occasionally exasperating man. One of the great relishers of life.'