Paul Hickinbotham was a consultant surgeon in Leicester. He was born in Birmingham on 21 March 1917, the second son of Frederick John Long Hickinbotham, an export merchant and JP, and Gertrude née Ball. He was educated at West House School, Birmingham, and Rugby, and went on to Birmingham to do his medical training, qualifying in 1939. There he was much influenced by H H Sampson, a charismatic general surgeon from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Hickinbotham went on to specialise in surgery, becoming resident surgical officer at Bradford Royal Infirmary from 1941 to 1942, when he passed the FRCS. He joined the RAMC in 1942 and served in North Africa and Italy. After the war he returned to the Leicester group of hospitals, where he served as a general surgeon on the staff until he retired in 1982. He married Catherine Cadbury in 1942. They had one son, Roger, and one daughter, Claire, neither of whom went into medicine. They had eight grandchildren. His extra-curricular interests included forestry and Welsh hill walking. He died at his home in Leicester on 22 September 2006.