Julian Elkington was a consultant general surgeon on Merseyside. He was born on 14 January 1934 in Newport, Shropshire, the second child of George Ernest Elkington, a general practitioner and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and Kathleen (‘Kitty’) Mary Elkington née Budgen, the daughter of a priest. There was a strong medical tradition in the family: the Elkingtons had practised medicine in the Midlands since the 1830s; his paternal grandmother’s family, the Baddeleys, had had a practice in Newport since the 1770s. Julian had one sister and two brothers – Stephen became a consultant physician at King’s College Hospital and Andrew was a consultant ophthalmologist in Southampton and also a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Julian was educated at Repton from 1947 to 1952 and went on to Clare College, Cambridge and then Middlesex Hospital Medical School for his clinical studies. He gained a BA in 1955 and qualified with a MB BChir degree in 1958. Between 1960 and 1962 he carried out his National Service with the British Army of the Rhine. He held house posts at the Middlesex and Central Middlesex hospitals, and then a resident surgical officer appointment at the Brompton Hospital. Following registrar and senior resident placements in Birmingham, in 1972 he settled on Merseyside, as a consultant surgeon at Clatterbridge Hospital. One of Julian’s great loves was anatomy – blessed with an encyclopaedic mind, he soaked up an endless supply of information and knowledge. So much so, that he later diagnosed his fourth son’s fractured zygoma entirely over the phone – when the local teaching hospital had twice incorrectly diagnosed the issue as deep bruising. As his anaesthetist of 16 years at Arrowe Park, John Sprigg, noted: ‘it was plain that Julian was a committed NHS surgeon’ – and throughout his career he was an active force in improving the NHS. In 1970, Julian was part of a BMA action group that petitioned the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to re-evaluate young doctors’ pay and working hours. In June 1983, St John’s Hospice was opened on the Wirral. Julian, and his wife Jill, were pivotal in its inception – along with a number of other local community members – fundraising and petitioning the local council to remedy the county’s lack of a hospice. Without Jill and Julian’s actions (and other’s), families on the Wirral might still not have the invaluable end of life care a hospice provides. Above all, Julian was a family man. He married Jill Taylor in April 1961 and the couple had four boys. They met on the wards of the Middlesex Hospital, where Jill worked as a nurse. Retiring in 1998 he moved to Rotherfield Peppard, a small village near Henley, where he and his beloved wife, lived directly opposite their oldest son and his wife and children. It was a perfect reward for a life of hard work and service. Julian died on 16 October 2024 at the age of 90 and left behind an extended family, including eight grandchildren.