Charles Clinton-Thomas ('CT') was born on the 15 January 1912 in Dehra Dun, India, the eldest son of Brigadier Robert Clinton-Thomas RE and Evelyn Baddeley. He was educated at Charterhouse and University College Hospital and qualified with the conjoint diploma in 1937. His early appointments were at UCH, West London Hospital, Charing Cross and the Connaught Hospital, where he was much influenced by Joe Fathi and John Scholefield. He served in the RAF from August 1939 to March 1945, reaching the rank of wing-commander. After the war he returned for more surgical training and took the FRCS in 1948. He had a restless career. He served in the Colonial Medical Service in Malaya from 1951 to 1954 throughout the Emergency. He was for a short time acting Medical Superintendent at the Christian Medical College, Vellore. After a spell in private practice in Canada he joined the Bahamas Medical Service from 1957 to 1964, where he became well known for his skill in orthopaedics and trauma. Despite his isolation he read avidly, and would invite many of the more famous innovators in surgery to visit Nassau to operate on the local population gratis. He continued in private practice there until he went to Bulawayo in 1977. He retired in 1985 to Wales to pursue his hobby, bridge. He published one notable case report of a gigantic leiomyolipoma of the kidney in 1956 which set an unbroken record. In 1958 he married Mary Gwynne Lloyd. He died on holiday in Devon on 22 September 1991.