John Tanat Williams was born on 31 March 1940 in Anglesea where his family were farmers. He studied medicine in Cardiff at the Welsh National School of Medicine, graduating MB, BCh in 1966. After various house jobs at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport and the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford , he became a registrar at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and honorary tutor in surgery at the University of Bristol. Continuing his training in the USA, he spent time as a postgraduate scholar at the University of California in San Francisco. On his return to the UK he worked in London at St Marks Hospital for Diseases of the Colon and Rectum and the Middlesex Hospital. He passed the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1972. After working at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospitals for a while, he was appointed, in 1980, to the staff of the newly built Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, West Midlands. As medical director of the clinical commissioning team he was involved in the creation of a department of gastrointestinal endoscopy and the organisation of the surgical facilities it required. For a time after he had given up his management duties, he continued to perform breast and colorectal surgical therapy, especially for cancer patients who found in him a deeply sympathetic clinician. He was known for his soft Welsh accent and gentle sense of humour. In 1995 he was awarded the fellowship of the college *ad eundum*. After retirement he developed his hobbies of beekeeping and painting in watercolour, at which he became proficient, and also threw himself into charity work. He had met his wife, Anne, at medical school and she became a general practitioner. On 26 December 2020 he died from pneumonia secondary to chronic lymphatic leukaemia aged 80 and was survived by his wife and children, Helen, Ruth and Steven.