Richard Webster Doyle qualified in 1928 and graduated from Liverpool University in the following year. There is no record of his early appointments but he served in the RAMC during the second world war. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Far East, spending three years in Changi jail where his surgical work in extremely onerous conditions earned him the gratitude of many fellow prisoners and a personal citation from Admiral Lord Mountbatten. On return to Liverpool he was appointed consultant surgeon to the Royal Southern Hospital and became a member of the Travelling Surgical Club. An able communicator and teacher, he was most popular with his students who elected him postgraduate president of the Liverpool Medical Students' Society. Little is recorded of his work in his published obituary but it is clear that he was a good-humoured and colourful character who lived life to the full and was invariably topped by a bowler hat. He was Irish to the backbone. In 1977, for his services to the community, he was a recipient of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal and of a papal knighthood - the highest accolade the Roman Catholic church is able to award to a layman. The diversity of his character was shown by the pleasure he derived from owning a daunting collection of vintage motorcycles, one of which he rode to the Rome Olympic Games in 1960. He was also a keen fly fisherman who especially enjoyed a stretch of river in the Lake District. But medicine and a spirit of service was clearly in his blood for, long after his retirement from surgery, and even after the age of 80, he continued to do locum work in general practice. When he died, aged 84, on 22 October 1989 he was survived by his wife, Margaret, and four children.