Colin Craig was born in Manchester on 11 November 1915, the son of Colin McKean Craig, a medical practitioner of Kendal, Westmorland, and Sophia Maud née McKinna, a nurse. He was educated at Monkton Combe School and St Bartholomew's Hospital. He completed junior casualty posts under Harold Rogers at Bart's, Geoffrey Keynes at St Albans and Reginald Vick at Friern Barnet. He joined the RAMC in 1940, serving as medical officer to the 1st Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment in India and Burma, where he was mentioned in despatches and rose to the rank of Major. After the war, he completed registrar posts at Liverpool and St James Balham under Henry Vernon and Norman Tanner, before being appointed as a consultant to the Lowestoft Hospital in 1952. There he found himself doing very general surgery, trephining skulls when necessary and operating on in-growing toe nails, but his main interests were in intestinal surgery and the thyroid. He was a founder member of the Surgical 60 Travelling Club. He married in 1943 Irene Joan Deldham, a nurse serving in the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Sisters. They had one daughter, Jennifer, and one son, David M Craig FRCS, who is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Worthing. Colin Craig retired in 1980, and continued to enjoy game fishing, bird-watching and gardening. He died on 26 June 2002.