Leonard Easton was an obstetrician and gynaecologist at the London Hospital. His background was unusual. His parents, Leonard Tytherleigh Easton, an elderly insurance broker, and Maria Bertrand Easton née de Lis met in Japan and he was born in Tientsin, China, on 11 July 1921. His education at Harrow was paid for by a wealthy uncle and there he excelled at rugby and science. Although diminutive, he was fast and fiercely competitive. His early passion for beetles, butterflies and the contents of rock pools from his beloved Cornish beaches, where he spent his childhood, evolved into a passion for human creatures: he never considered any career other than medicine. His studies led him to Cambridge, and he was always immensely proud of his years at Pembroke College. He went on to the Middlesex Hospital, where he met his future wife, Mary Josephine Latham, a highly spirited nurse who later became a prize-winning theatre sister. They married in 1946 and had two children. He had decided early on to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology, and loved surgery from the outset. He had small hands, but they were steady as a rock, almost until he died. He carried out his National Service in Egypt and then went back to the Middlesex. He was a senior registrar there and then became a lecturer in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Birmingham. He was appointed as a consultant at King George's Hospital, Ilford, and Ilford Maternity Hospital, and became a consultant at the London Hospital in the late 1950s, where he remained until his retirement in the late eighties. He was immensely proud of the London and all his colleagues with whom he worked. He felt passionately about his job, and he and his colleagues were determined to bring down maternal mortality. He regularly went out on visits with the local obstetric flying squad and campaigned for supervised and hospital births. And, by the 1960s and 1970s, maternal mortality had significantly decreased. Early on he had to make a decision about where he stood on the issue of termination of pregnancy. As a Catholic, it was for him a defining moment. He knew he had to decide between what he thought was medically right and ethical and what the church was telling him. He decided that women had the right to choose termination if the circumstances were medically and socially appropriate, and never went to church again. As his daughter, I rarely saw him during my childhood. My memories are only of high days and holidays. Christmas was always special: he took my brother and me onto the wards and always carved the ward turkey dressed as Father Christmas. We met the nurses and patients, and felt part of his profession. I also remember him teaching me to swim in those Cornish rock pools, where he also saved a colleague's daughter from drowning. He wouldn't allow me to have my first two babies at home, when I was championing the natural childbirth renaissance in the 1970s. I remember him saying to me that you shouldn't expect to enjoy labour: the whole idea was to ensure the health of the mother and child. We had quite an argument about that, but I lost. He was a progressive, liberal thinker and a real supporter of women. And he did make a difference. I am very proud of him and what he achieved in nearly 50 years of medicine.