Ian Haywood was born on 3 October 1941. He was educated at Bedford School and St Thomas's Hospital, where he was a Kitchener scholar and won many prizes. As a student he held a Territorial Army commission, and in 1964 he took a regular commission with the RAMC, serving as MO to the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He obtained the FRCS in 1971, having received specialist training in military establishments and in academic appointments at Bart's and the Westminster Hospital. He was appointed consultant surgeon to the Defence Medical Services in 1978. His chief interest was in missile and blast injuries in training programmes for both Army and civilian hospitals. He was a member of the Stoke Group, which advised the government on the professional and medical aspects of disaster management. From 1985 to 1990 he was Professor of Military Surgery, a position held jointly between the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal Army Medical College. After a posting to Saudi Arabia he returned to command the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital, Woolwich, from 1991 to 1993. He was the first Ben Eiseman Visiting Professor, Uniformed Services, Bethesda, Maryland, and was awarded the Mitchiner Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1988 he became an Officer Brother of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. In 1989 he was an examiner of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and was elected a Fellow. In 1993 he was appointed Honorary Surgeon to the Queen and in 1994 was awarded the Michael de Bakey International Military Surgical Award. He was a founder member of the Faculty of Emergency Medicine of the six Royal Colleges (physicians and surgeons) and was awarded the Laerdal Medal of the British Association for Immediate Care. As a result of his endeavours, no British soldier died of inadequate first aid on the battlefield in the Falklands war, and out of 753 who were operated on in the field hospital, only three died. Haywood was a born raconteur, a popular after-dinner speaker and a keen historian. Despite being a non-smoker he developed lung cancer, from which he died. During his last illness he completed a paper on Dominic Larrey, Napoleon's chief surgeon during his Moscow campaign. He married Margot Hanna in 1970 and they had two daughters, Jennifer and Suzy. His wife and family survived him when he died on 3 September 1994.