Kenneth Sinclair Elphinstone Macrae was born on 6 August 1914. He was the second child and first son of Kenneth William Duncan Macrae, MB ChB Edinburgh, a general practitioner in Rainford for 51 years, and of Isabel Marion Duncan Macrae (née Adams). He was educated at Ormskirk Grammar School and the University of Liverpool where he graduated in 1936 before serving as house surgeon and orthopaedic house surgeon at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary. He was then house physician and house surgeon in obstetrics at Walton Hospital. During the second world war he served in the RAMC from October 1939 to March 1946, being demobilized with the rank of Major. After the war he became a surgical registrar at Ormskirk Hospital and took the Final FRCS in 1953. He then became a general practitioner in Rainsford with his father and worked as a part-time senior casualty officer at Warrington Infirmary. He also lectured in anatomy and physiology at the Liverpool School of Occupational Therapy from 1948 to 1958 and was a member of the Liverpool Medical Institution. In 1958 he married Monica T. Barry, who had graduated MB ChB Liverpool. She also held the DA and was the daughter of a general practitioner who worked first in Newport and later in Liverpool. Of their five children, four were daughters and the eldest a son. Macrae died suddenly on 12 September 1982, aged 68 and was survived by his wife and children.