Born in 1879 he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and St Bartholomew's Hospital where he served as house surgeon, ophthalmic house surgeon, and chief assistant in the children's department; he was also house physician at the Metropolitan Hospital. Coventon qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1904 and graduated at Cambridge in the same year, proceeding to the Fellowship in 1908, and the MD in 1910 with a thesis on chronic intra-cranial tuberculosis. He published a paper on 'Syphilis and parasyphilis of the nervous system in childhood' in *St Bartholomew's Hospital Reports* 1913, 48, 49-66. During the war of 1914-18, he served in the RAMC in France, reaching the rank of Major; the French Government awarded him the *Medaille des Epidemies*. The rest of his career was spent in general practice at Aylesbury, where he was surgeon to the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital. In retirement he lived at 17 Five Mile Drive, Oxford, where he died on 28 February 1965, aged eighty- six, survived by his wife, son and daughter. He supported the activities of the Nuffield Talking-book Library for the Blind.