Alan Alldred was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and a former President of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association. He was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 10 June 1920, the son of Joseph Alldred, the assistant head of Brown's Commercial College and Kate, neé Brown, the founder and head of the college, and the daughter of a gold-miner from Kyeburn Diggings, Otago. Alldred was educated at Normal Street Junior School, where he was *dux*, and Otago Boys' High School. He qualified at Otago, where he won five blues for playing hockey. He was house surgeon to Renfrew White, doyen of orthopaedic surgery in New Zealand. After a year as orthopaedic registrar at Auckland, he spent a year in the New Zealand Army Medical Corps, and returned to be demonstrator in anatomy at Otago. In 1948 he worked his passage to England as medical officer on the *SS Coptic*, passed the primary and final FRCS in 1949, and become registrar at Great Ormond Street. He then specialised in orthopaedics, serving at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital Oswestry. He returned to Dunedin as assistant visiting orthopaedic surgeon and lecturer at the University of Otago. In 1956 he was appointed consultant to the South Canterbury Hospital Board and, in 1958, to the Waitaki Hospital Board. In 1961 he undertook a major tour of overseas orthopaedic centres and studied in England for a paper on congenital pseudarthrosis of the clavicle, which remains a classic on this topic. In 1962 he was appointed director of orthopaedic services. He was closely involved with the development of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association, becoming its President in 1968. Hitherto most aspiring orthopaedic surgeons had gone overseas to get specialist training: Alan organised a New Zealand training programme, which became a model for Australasia. In 1972 he was appointed Foundation Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Otago, a chair that became autonomous in 1978. He was a member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He was twice awarded the Orthopaedic Association's Gillies medal for his original scientific contributions and was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association in 1970. He was appointed a CBE on his retirement in 1982 for services to orthopaedic medicine. He then began a new career as medical superintendent of the Kew Hospital. A national Alan Alldred Travelling Fellowship in orthopaedics was established in his memory, the first fellow being appointed in 2001. In 1945, he married Pat, who was a nurse at the Dunedin Hospital. They had one daughter, Susan, who became a psychotherapist, and two sons, John and Christopher, who became a doctor. He died on 13 December 2000, after a long afternoon in the garden.