Born in India on 24 February 1901, son of Major-General Philip Mackay Ellis OBE, AMS, he was educated at Wellington College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he took second class honours in Parts I and II of the Natural Sciences Tripos 1922 and 1923. He studied medicine at St George's Hospital, qualifying in 1925. After holding house appointments at St George's and elsewhere, Ellis decided to specialise in orthopaedics and went as surgical registrar to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. In 1932 Ellis was appointed to the new post of orthopaedic surgeon at St Mary's Hospital at the age of 30. There he built up a first-class orthopaedic and fracture department. Later he was appointed to the staff of Paddington Green Children's Hospital, the Lord Mayor Treloar Orthopaedic Hospital at Alton, and the Heatherwood Orthopaedic Hospital at Ascot. During the second world war he headed a surgical team at Harefield, until at the invasion of France in 1944 he was given charge of the orthopaedic unit at the EMS Hospital at Park Prewett, where thousands of casualties flown direct from the battlefields passed through his hands. Ellis was a man of abundant energy, mental and physical. His most outstanding qualities were wisdom, honesty, common sense and a capacity for disinterested service. He served on the governing bodies of both of his teaching hospitals, was treasurer of the British Orthopaedic Association, and had been President of the Section of Orthopaedics of the Royal Society of Medicine. At St Mary's he was Chairman of the Medical Committee and a member of the Academic Board. At the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital he was Chairman of the Staff Committee and of the Academic Board of the Institute of Orthopaedics. He was Recorder of the William Little Club. Ellis married in 1937 Angela Peart Robinson, and they had a son and daughter. Ellis lived in Paddington near St Mary's. His recreations were his garden, in which he cultivated fifteen varieties oflily, and the making of tapestries. Valentine Ellis was a big man, tall, broad and erect with deep blue, penetrating eyes. In his youth he had been a keen sportsman but later he relinquished all sport except skiing which he and his wife enjoyed every year. He had a strong sense of humour and talked easily on most subjects. For some months before his death he had known that he was unfit, but it was characteristic of the man that he kept on working as hard as ever. On the morning of 15 September 1953 he finished his fracture clinic at St Mary's and then collapsed and died at the age of 52. Publications : *Recent advances in orthopaedic surgery*, with B H Burns. London 1937. Battle casualties treated by penicillin, with A Innes. *Lancet* 1945, 1, 524.