Born on 26 May 1924 the third child and second son of Alfred William Redcliffe, civil servant, and his wife Elsie Nora Diggins, of Headingley, Leeds, he was educated at the Leeds Grammar School and Medical School, qualifying with second-class honours in 1947. He served as house surgeon at the General Infirmary and demonstrator of anatomy in the Medical School; he was also successively orthopaedic and ophthalmic house surgeon at the Infirmary. He was commissioned a Lieutenant in the RAMC (T). Redcliffe married in 1948 Marguerite Joan Glover M.B., who survived him with a daughter; his parents also survived him. He died of acute polioencephalitis at 166 Otley Road, Far Headingley, Leeds, on 2 August 1952, aged 28, less than two months after taking the Fellowship.