Richard Dawson was born in 1916 and educated at the Bishop's Stortford College and University College Hospital, qualifying with the conjoint diploma in 1939. He joined the RAMC, although the formality of service life during the war was not very compatible with Dick's debonair and easy manner. He declined to engage in saluting drill and was posted to the Far East. Captured at the fall of Singapore, by some miracle he survived the horrific experience of ministering to the needs of allied prisoners and slaving on the infamous Burma railway. After the war he wrote, as catharsis, his memories of the awfulness of his time as a prisoner of war, but he never published these. He earned one medal fewer than his wife, Betty, and would on suitable occasions wear her ribbons on his evening attire. He was only once discovered! After the war he became a registrar at University College Hospital, and then senior registrar to Hill End Hospital in St Alban's. In 1953 he took up a post as consultant plastic surgeon at the Mount Vernon Centre for Plastic Surgery in Northwood and at the Royal Free and Royal National Orthopaedic Hospitals. In his professional career Dick contributed much to the development of his specialty; he was a great artist and a great showman. President of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1973 and of the plastic surgery section of the Royal Society of Medicine, he was a founder member of what was to become the British Society for Surgery of the Hand and adviser in plastic surgery training at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. When he retired in 1981 his contribution to the management of facial fractures and oral cancer was recognised as being considerable. He excelled as a teacher, counsellor and friend of many trainees and colleagues. He was always good company, and his advice was always well worth taking. When he died on 21 June 1992 he was survived by his wife, Betty, his sons Tim and Nick, and two grandchildren.