Godfrey William Arthur was a consultant general surgeon to Worthing District Health Authority. He was born on 17 October 1931 in Pontypool, Gwent, South Wales, the only son of William Arthur, a company director with a building firm, and Elizabeth Arthur née Walby, a nurse. He went to school at the Jones’ West Monmouth School in Pontypool, becoming head boy before leaving with an exhibition to read medicine at Downing College, Cambridge. Following his three years at Cambridge, he went to London and completed his undergraduate training at Westminster Hospital Medical School, where he remembered Robert Cox as being a very good teacher. His postgraduate surgical training included working as a house officer and registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital under Brian Truscott, who he held in high regard, two years in Cardiff, and then posts as a senior registrar in Leicester and Sheffield. He married Carole Heron, an Addenbrooke’s-trained nurse, in 1964. In 1969, he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to Worthing Hospital, a busy district general hospital with a very elderly population, at a time when there were only three general surgeons covering a population of over 150,000. In addition to his day-to-day work, he played an important role in the setting up of the Worthing Hospital breast unit and spent eight years on the board of the Worthing District Health Authority. He was an active and popular teacher calling everyone, including his junior colleagues, a very Welsh ‘Boyo’. After retirement in 1991, he enjoyed golf and was a keen wood-turner and woodworker, along with being an enthusiastic Rotarian in West Worthing, the motto of which – ‘Service before self’ – epitomised his attitude to life. He died in 2018 and was survived by his wife Carole, their son Richard, daughter Jennifer and her much-loved twins.