Harry Beagley qualified at the University of Otago in 1946 and came to England to specialise in ENT surgery. He returned to Auckland as a consultant ENT surgeon, but came back to London as a consultant otologist at the Nuffield Hearing and Speech Centre of the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital, and senior lecturer at the Institute of Laryngology and Otology. He published extensively on the effect of acoustic trauma on the cells junctions in the organ of Corti. He retired to live in the South of France, where he died after a prolonged illness on 18 November 2002.