Anthony Ashford Hodges was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Great Yarmouth, Gorleston-on-Sea and Lowestoft. Very general in his approach to orthopaedic conditions, he particularly enjoyed performing joint replacements. He was a unique character, and had an unusual upbringing and an eventful life. He was born in Vienna on 24 July 1922, the only child of William Ashford Hodges, an architect, and Anna (Nitza) Bonna. William had trained in the UK, but was sent to Alexandria, Egypt, to advise on the rebuilding of Victoria College and then stayed on as chief architect to the Egyptian government. Anthony's mother was born in Turkey, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat. She was a gifted pianist and studied music at the Vienna Conservatoire, before moving with her family to Alexandria after the death of her father. There she met and married William, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Anthony's father died of pneumonia in 1925, and Nitza decided to move to Switzerland with her son. Anthony went to the English school at Chateau d'Oex, where the headmaster introduced him to lepidoptery, which remained a lifelong passion. He collected butterflies and moths from various parts of the world, particularly Tanzania. Hundreds of specimens are preserved in cabinets, still in the possession of the family. From Switzerland he went to Downside School, where his academic record was good. Although he contemplated a career as an entomologist, he went into medicine, first as an undergraduate at Downing College, Cambridge, and then for his clinical studies to the London Hospital, which bore the brunt of the German bombing of the East End. Some of his clinical training took place at Billericay Hospital, followed by stints at Brentwood and Chase Farm hospitals. He took the MRCS and LRCP examinations when he was still only 21. In 1943, while still a student, Anthony met his future wife, Joan Halliday, when they both were working at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield. She was a student nurse from the London Hospital. They married in 1944 when both were back working at the London. After house appointments at Chase Farm and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, Anthony then moved to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in May 1945 as a house surgeon to Herbert Alfred 'Tommy' Brittain and Ken McKee, later expressing his gratitude to both of these pioneering surgeons. He saw Brittain's work in treating the fractured neck of the femur with a trifin pin, and was able to witness his new methods of arthrodesis of the hip joint in tuberculosis as he perfected the ischiofemoral variety of fixation. McKee, on the other hand, designed a pin and plate for fixation of pertrochanteric fractures of the femur, as well as a lag screw used in arthrodesis of the hip joint. Based on his enthusiasm for taking motor-cycles and car engines to pieces and then rebuilding them, Ken McKee conceived the notion that worn out human joints could also benefit from 'spare parts', hence his original concept of metal to metal artificial hip joints that heralded a new era in the surgical treatment of disabling osteoarthritis. National Service then called, and Anthony served on a hospital ship from 1945 to 1948 as a captain in the RAMC. When demobilised he returned to the London Hospital as an orthopaedic registrar under Sir Henry Osmond-Clarke. He also did periods at Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, and St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey. He passed the FRCS in 1950 and decided to specialise in general trauma and orthopaedics. In 1952 Anthony took a job with the Colonial Service in Tanganyika. He was called a special grade medical officer and was expected to do everything from general medicine to general surgery. He became involved with two leprosy hospitals and published a paper on 'The treatment of deformities of the foot in leprosy' (*East Afr Med J* 1956 Aug;33[8]:301-3). After various postings to provincial towns around the country, he ended up in 1963 as surgical specialist in the country's then capital, Dar es Salaam. Here he was instrumental in creating and running the Muhimbili Rehabilitation Centre. In 1964 Anthony and Joan decided that they must come home for the sake of their children (Hugh, Anne, Nicholas and Gabrielle), who were all at school in England. Being out of touch with the NHS after so many years abroad, Anthony wrote to his former chief at the London Hospital, Sir Henry Osmond-Clarke, and also to Sir Herbert Seddon of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, seeking their advice. They told him to wait another year, by which time he would be in a position to apply for consultant posts and they would give their support. In February 1965, Anthony and Joan returned to the UK. Eschewing the more conventional sea voyage, they decided to travel by car, a distance of around 5,000 miles. They were accompanied by a Czech nursing sister, Jari Kolar, and travelled in two cars. For much of the time Anthony drove a small Peugeot without an operative clutch. Along the way they also had 42 punctures. The journey initially took them through Kenya, Uganda and into the Sudan, where they discovered a civil war was raging. Their visa for Sudan was torn up at the border, but they managed to persuade the authorities to let them through and drove 250 miles to Juba. On route they encountered villages with charred houses, and no sign of human or animal habitation. But they did link up with some rebels, who were very friendly, even going so far as to construct a makeshift ferry for them to make a river crossing. From the Sudan they travelled through the Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, northern Nigeria and Niger, and then across the Sahara to Algeria. They had various adventures on the way, including being stuck in sand for two days, being rescued and then helping to rescue a trans-Sahara expedition. The trio also spent some time with the French Foreign Legion in the Arak gorges. In 1966 Anthony Ashford Hodges' began his NHS consultant orthopaedic post at Great Yarmouth, Gorleston-on-Sea and Lowestoft, and continued until he retired in 1983. For much of his time working for the Great Yarmouth and Waveney Health Authority, orthopaedics was carried out at Gorleston Hospital, which was half way between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Gorleston Hospital had originally been built at the end of the 19th century, but in 1965 a new operating suite was installed and the following year the hospital became the orthopaedic unit for the district with 23 beds. Orthopaedic emergences were treated at the main hospitals in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Prior to Anthony's appointment to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, orthopaedics was overseen by consultants from Norwich. David Burgess joined him in 1972 and together they started to build a department of orthopaedics. Anthony was always full of enthusiasm, cheerful and keen to listen and learn. He was good at DIY and on one occasion when an instrument was not available for an operation, he left the theatre, drove home and obtained the necessary part from his workshop! He had monocular vision for much of his later adult life, having had surgery for a melanoma in 1972 at Moorfields Hospital, somewhat delayed in its diagnosis. This did not impair his handling of bones and joints, nor his energetic outside pursuits of sailing in the North Sea and further afield, and gardening. Presumably short of excitement in the NHS, in 1974 Anthony took a two-year sabbatical to work as surgeon superintendent at the Vila Base Hospital in the New Hebrides, a small Melanesian country in the South Pacific, now called Vanuatu. Joan and Anthony bought a 46 ft ferro-concrete ketch, in which they had many enjoyable and hair-raising trips around the islands, until the end of Anthony's tour, when they decided to sail the boat back to the UK. They got as far as Papua New Guinea and were in the process of negotiating the Torres Strait, a well-known hazard, when they holed the vessel on the edge of a reef and had to paddle ashore to a nearby island, where they were rescued. After the loss of his boat in the Torres Strait, Anthony immediately bought a 45 ft ketch (with a steel hull this time) and worked on it in his garden in Norfolk until he retired from the NHS in 1983. He and Joan then set sail for the Bahamas and spent a year living on the boat in the Caribbean. The return journey was extremely hazardous: they ran into a hurricane and only narrowly escaped. For several years following his retirement, he did a number of locums around the country, as well as some medico-legal work, but it did not dim his adventurous spirit. In 1986, now aged 64, he and Joan embarked on their final sailing adventure. They planned to sail back to East Africa via the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Clutch trouble occasioned an enforced stop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where they were held at gunpoint by the Saudi authorities, as they had no visa. Fortuitously their son-in-law was just coming to the end of a diplomatic posting in Saudi Arabia and he managed to get them released. Within a day of setting sail though, they had grounded the yacht on an uncharted reef and were stuck for 10 days. After jettisoning almost everything on board, they got the boat afloat and limped into Port Sudan. The boat was shipped back the UK and repaired! Thereafter, they decided to confine their sailing adventures to the Mediterranean, leaving their boat in Bodrum in the south western region of Turkey: they spent four months each year sailing around the southern Med. When the boat was sold, they decided to settle for a quieter lifestyle, first in Norfolk and then Thaxted in Essex, but this did not stop them travelling to their beloved Tanzania in 2005 and to Australia in 2007, when Anthony went snorkelling on the Barrier Reef. Anthony Ashford Hodges died on 2 September 2011, aged 89. Perhaps his death notice, published in the national newspapers, best sums up his life: 'Orthopaedic surgeon, sailor, adventurer and friend of Africa and passionate gardener, adored husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather of a family running to keep up.'