Robin Harold John Darvell was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon to the Kent and Canterbury and Isle of Thanet District hospitals. He was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, on 2 August 1939, the son of Harold Herbert Darvell, an engineer, and Doris Emily Darvell née Dover. He attended Dr Challenor’s Grammar School in Amersham and then studied medicine at King’s College, University of London, qualifying in 1963. He gained his diploma in ophthalmology in 1970, his FRCS in 1972 and his fellowship of the College of Ophthalmologists in 1988, the year of its foundation. Prior to his consultant appointment, he was a senior casualty officer at the Westminster Hospital, a registrar at the Oxford Eye Hospital, a registrar in the department of plastic surgery at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, a resident surgical officer at Moorfields and a senior registrar at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital in London. He was a member of Middlesex County Cricket Club and played in the London Old Boys Association Football League. In 2013 a painting he discovered in a cardboard box in a Canterbury sale and bought as part of a job lot for £30 was found to be by the English painter John Constable and worth more than £250,000. In 1966 he married Elizabeth Swain. They had two sons. Darvell died on 8 November 2013 at the age of 74.