Desmond Rosborough was born on 31 May 1932 and educated at Epsom College and St Bartholomew's Hospital. After graduating MB BS MRCS LRCP in 1956 he became a house surgeon in his teaching hospital. He then gained experience in general surgery and was registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and in the orthopaedic department at St Bartholomew's Hospital. For four years he was senior registrar at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and then went to Ipswich to become consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the hospitals there. Desmond Rosborough was a big man in stature, physical strength, and endurance, and particularly in the virtues that make for comradeship. For the hospitals which he served with increasingly appreciated skill his death leaves a gap that cannot be filled. He had come to deserve and receive that most sincere compliment, the confidence of colleagues in his own and other disciplines that made him in many respects a consultants' consultant. He was a man who worked by reason, but was moved by compassion. There was a warmth about him that illuminated his work, linked with the long training that informed and directed his care of patients and his relations with nursing, medical and administrative colleagues. He was married and had two daughters. He died on 30 April 1979.