Joscelyn (‘Jos’) Penrose was an orthopaedic surgeon for some 37 years, progressing from his first post at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, to his retirement as a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the Coventry and Warwickshire group of hospitals. Born on 15 August 1915 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, to his mother, Nellie Penrose née Osler, Jos was the third of five children and the oldest boy. His father, Nevill Coghill Penrose, was a family GP for over 30 years, so it was logical that Jos would take up a medical career. After four years at Saint Ronan’s Preparatory School in West Worthing, he attended Stowe School in Buckinghamshire from 1929 to 1933 under the famous headmaster, J F Roxburgh. Jos described his academic career at Stowe as ‘not particularly brilliant’, although his skill with his hands became apparent when he built himself a punt for fishing in the school lakes. After Stowe, Jos attended Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1933 to 1936, achieving a BA and then a MB BChir and MRCS LRCP in 1939. War broke out almost as soon as Jos had started his first medical position as a clinical assistant/house surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. He was posted to Botleys Park Emergency Medical Service Hospital in Surrey, where he was part of the skeleton crew who set up the emergency wartime surgery unit with little or no resources. So Jos found himself making a lot of equipment, including an operating table built from scrap wood! While at Botleys Park, Jos met Katherine (‘Kay’) Forsyth, a physiotherapist from Cape Town and the daughter of a Scottish-born architect who had emigrated to South Africa. After knowing each other for a year or so, they were married in 1940 at the height of the Battle of Britain. Kay had come to the UK in 1939 to train as a physiotherapist, but when war broke out she was unable to go back to Cape Town and her parents were unable to visit her. In fact, Jos and Kay had been married and had three children before Kay’s parents met her husband in 1949. ‘Fortunately,’ Jos remembered, ‘I think I passed muster with my parents-in-law – not that they had much choice in the matter!’ After his medical service at Botleys Park, treating wounded servicemen and wounded civilians evacuated from the Blitz in London, Jos was called up in 1943 for service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was initially regimental medical officer to the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards with the rank of second lieutenant. He was then graded as an orthopaedic surgeon (with the rank of captain and later major) with postings including military hospitals in Stanley, Lincoln, Shrewsbury and York. In 1946, shortly after achieving his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was posted to the British Army of the Rhine in Hamburg, as the only orthopaedic specialist in the British sector. After he was demobilised in 1947, Jos’s career took him first to a position as postgraduate registrar at the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, Oxford, which later became the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. Later the same year he was appointed as a registrar and tutor in orthopaedics at Bristol Royal Infirmary. In 1950 he achieved the position of consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the Coventry and Warwickshire group of hospitals, which included the Warwickshire Orthopaedic Hospital and the Paybody Children’s Hospital. Jos remembered this as a very difficult time in Coventry. The hospital had been bombed during the devastating Coventry Blitz, and was reduced from a modern 450-bed hospital to 60 beds overnight. Makeshift arrangements had to be made, providing beds at various local hospitals and convalescent homes. This ‘temporary’ accommodation continued until the opening of the new Walsgrave Hospital on the outskirts of Coventry, over 20 years later. Jos Penrose’s publications included ‘The Monteggia fracture with posterior dislocation of the radial head’ (*J Bone Joint Surg Br.* 1951 Feb;33-B[1]:65-73) and ‘Neoplasms of bone’ (*Practitioner.* 1977 Feb;218[1304]:252-3. He contributed a chapter on injuries of the ankle and foot to *Clinical surgery: 12 fractures and dislocations* (Butterworths, 1966), and a summary of his paper on tarsal synostosis and the ball and socket joint, which he read at the September meeting of the British Orthopaedic Association in 1973, was published in the *Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery*. He was president of the Naughton Dunn Orthopaedic Club for a time during its early stages. Jos held his consultant post in Coventry until his retirement from the NHS in 1976. He continued some private and insurance work for a few years more, and was appointed to the Medical Appeal Tribunal in Birmingham, sitting on this until 1985. But his retirement was principally and enthusiastically devoted to his pastimes of fly fishing and gardening. Jos very much enjoyed the fact that he had been retired for six years longer than he had worked! His beloved wife, Katherine, died on Christmas Day 2011. He then remained in their marital home in Claverdon, Warwickshire, for a further seven years before moving to a care home in Oxford. Joscelyn Penrose died on 13 February 2019 at the age of 103. He was survived and greatly missed by his four children, David Penrose, Judith Carslake, Alison Whitelaw and Janet Penrose, seven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren