John Dickinson, always known as 'Dickie', was born in Birkenhead in 1909. After studying at Cambridge he went on to Guy's Hospital, where he qualified in 1934. He served in the RAMC during the second world war, in Assam and in a mobile surgical unit in Burma. He was appointed to the General Lying-In Hospital for Women in London in 1950, and worked there until his retirement in 1974, where staff were enlivened by his idiosyncratic descriptions of surgical positions, such as 'Mr Trendelenburg's most embarrassing position' (for the head-down tilt) or 'bring on the mighty Wurlitzer' (for diathermy). A modest man, always with a rose from his own garden in his buttonhole, he worked hard to honour his NHS commitment and is remembered with gratitude by his fifty or so trainees at Soho. He died in 1996, survived by his wife Barbara, also a doctor, four children and ten grandchildren.