Christopher John Kent Bulstrode was professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Oxford and a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. After leaving his Oxford posts, he went on to work for the Army and then Doctors of the World, which provides medics to regions struck by war, natural disasters and disease, and other NGOs. He was born on 5 January 1951, one of three children of John Bulstrode, a radiologist, and his wife Jacqueline (‘Jackie’) Bulstrode née Kent. The family lived on Guernsey, but Chris boarded, initially at Cheam Preparatory School, where the future King Charles was a fellow pupil, and then at Radley College. Precociously bright, Chris took a year out before he was old enough to take up his Oxford medical scholarship. Unlikely as it may seem for a 16 or 17-year-old, he developed a passion for studying geese and other birds, thanks to work experience with the eminent zoologist Konrad Lorenz at the Max Planck Institute in Bavaria. The inspired Bulstrode dropped medicine for zoology at Oxford, leading undergraduate expeditions to Iceland to study geese and to South America to study plankton in river mouths. But, deciding against a career in ornithology or marine biology, after graduating he reverted to medicine, qualifying in Cambridge and Oxford. During his clinical studies at Oxford, he joined the Navy. He held house posts at Oxford in the Nuffield Department of medicine and in Bath. Having left the Navy, and driven by wanderlust and an uneasy, restless spirit, Chris began his medical career proper by driving across the Nubian desert to the Sudan-Ethiopia border with a colleague. They each opened a medical clinic in a refugee camp. But there was no food, so medicine was no help. Bulstrode became a GP in Mombasa, and a lecturer in veterinary pathology in Dar es Salaam, before returning to Britain. He was a casualty officer at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, then worked at Westminster Hospital and the London Hospital, where he initially trained in orthopaedics. He was later a registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore and a senior registrar at East Ham Memorial Hospital. During his training in orthopaedics and trauma, Chris was awarded the Cutlers’ Surgical prize by the Royal College of Surgeons of England for his design of an instrument to close wounds following fasciotomy. He donated all proceeds from this to charity: he had no interest in the accumulation of wealth. He was appointed to a consultant post at Oxford and became a professor there in 1992. He evoked mixed feelings among senior colleagues, from admiration for his kindness and compassion to intense dislike. Highly controversially, he believed surgical colleagues were exploiting long waiting lists to boost private income. He even argued that senior colleagues had been in the job too long and had ‘progressive indispensablitis’. Campaigning for better conditions for junior doctors, who in the 1990s were routinely working more than 100 hours a week, he went undercover, posing as a night house officer to report on juniors’ working conditions. He was vehemently opposed by leading doctors, who insisted that a 48-hour week would stretch staffing levels to breaking point, disrupt continuity of care and adversely affect training. Believing that medical education lacked compassion, Chris and Victoria Hunt, a medical educationalist working in Oxford, who later became his second wife, devised a training programme to encourage medical students to discuss mutual problems and to teach in what was and still is largely an apprentice-based model. Their courses were adopted in many countries, including the US, Australia, New Zealand and India, and were run extensively by the Royal Colleges in England and Scotland and the intercollegiate boards. Determined to drive change, Chris was elected on to the General Medical Council. Yet the highly conservative council was not receptive to the forthright Bulstrode. After one vexatious meeting he returned home to complain to Victoria about stifling medical bureaucracy. In an interview with *The Times* in 2008 he recalled: ‘She turned to me and said, “Actually you’re getting a bit pompous and uninspired. If you don’t do something new, you’ll just freewheel into retirement and oblivion. After a session over a bottle of wine and a paper and pencil, Victoria dared me to offer the Army my services, and I find dares irresistible.’ When he volunteered for the Army as a trauma surgeon, the response was positive – until he revealed his age was 56. The recruiting office erupted into laughter, but he finally persuaded them he was serious. What made his application surprising was that he was, supposedly, a pacifist. While Victoria might have understood his need for action and challenge, his former wife Katherine (née Homewood) and their three children were less supportive – one was ‘incandescent’. They included Harry, now a neurosurgeon and researcher, John James, an Amnesty International fund manager and Jenny, an academic historian. Chris’s adventurous, buccaneering spirit took a drubbing under the harsh demands of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he gained one distinction – as its oldest officer trainee. He went on to become a frontline doctor at Camp Bastion, in Helmand, Afghanistan. On patrol his last fantasy of derring-do evaporated when what he thought were two suicide bombers landed spreadeagled at his feet. Stunned by gunfire that had knocked the men from their moped at a roadblock and surrounded by men half his age, he recalled: ‘I told myself. “Bulstrode, you’re facing the wrong way. You haven’t got a clue what’s going on. You’re never going to be Bruce Willis.”’ Chris had told himself in the past, as someone who went on peace marches, that soldiers were stupid and unreasoning. ‘But in fact, I liked and admired many of the men and women I met. They’re a team of hugely loyal, talented, committed individuals who are passionate about their jobs. There are plenty of things I don’t like about the Army, like the staggering weight of full combat gear and the gut-churning responsibility of going out on patrol, but I did savour the absolute simplicity of the life.’ After completing his scheduled three-month tour, he spent a further six months restructuring the Helmand healthcare services and working in refugee camps in Helmand and Lashkargah. ‘Retiring’ from the RAMC after Afghanistan, he decided to retrain as an emergency doctor in Invercargill, New Zealand, before working with Doctors of the World and other NGOs. He travelled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and to Sierra Leone during the 2014 to 2015 Ebola outbreak, as well as two stints in Nepal after the earthquakes, Ukraine during the Crimea crisis, and to Gaza and Antarctica, supporting expeditions. Chris was awarded a CBE in 2016 for his work with Doctors of the World and for his wider educational contribution to medicine across the world. His medal was presented to him by his former fellow pupil at Cheam, King Charles. Chris died of a progressive neurodegenerative disorder on 7 December 2023, aged 72. His was a life well lived, and his kindness, humour and intellect are missed by many people, both patients and friends.