Ian Hanson Heslop was a consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton. He was born in 1923 in Hexham, Northumberland, the son of James M Heslop, an engineer, and Margaret Heslop née Hanson. He grew up in Hexham and was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle. He studied on a combined dental and medical course at the University of Durham based at Newcastle and qualified with a BDS in 1946. He then joined the RAF for two years as a flying officer in the dental branch. He subsequently returned to Northumberland and studied for his MB BS medical degree, qualifying in 1951. He then moved to London, where he worked part time at the Eastman Dental Hospital and studied for his fellowship of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, which he gained in 1952. He was then appointed to a new registrar training programmes under Sir Harold Gillies and Norman Rowe at Rooksdown House in Basingstoke. In 1955 he moved to Manchester, where he was appointed as a senior registrar to Alan Moule, and in 1957 he became a consultant at Wigan. In 1960 Norman Rowe invited him to join his team in London, now based at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton. He initially covered and took clinics in Epsom, Dorking, Woking, Chertsey, Haslemere and even Chichester, finally consolidating his work to Roehampton, Haslemere and Guildford. In 1965, Heslop was one of the founder members of the British Association of Oral Surgeons and he was elected president in 1979. He was also closely involved with the Oral Surgery Club of Great Britain, becoming honorary secretary (from 1963 to 1974) and president (from 1974 to 1975). He was described by his former trainee Bob Tate as ‘a skilled and meticulous surgeon, a very sound opinion, a good teacher and an excellent role model’. Heslop died at home on 16 September 2017 at the age of 94. He was survived by his wife Margaret (née Macintyre), a former occupational therapist, whom he had married in 1951, and their four sons, Alastair, Alexander, Gordon and Stuart.