Derek Graff was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Hospital in Wolverhampton and at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry. He was born in Sydenham, London on 2 February 1928, the son of Robin Joseph Graff, a broker, and Emily Mabel Graff née Reed, and educated at the Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift in Dulwich, where he won a scholarship. His medical school training was at King’s College, London where, apart from his studies, he became adept at fencing and tennis. Early house appointments in orthopaedics at King’s stimulated his ambition to be an orthopaedic surgeon but his career path was interrupted in 1952 by National Service; he was stationed in the canal zone in Egypt and attained the rank of major. He passed the FRCS in London in 1957 and subsequently trained in orthopaedics at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital and the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke-on-Trent. In September 1963 he was appointed as a consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon both at the Royal Hospital in Wolverhampton and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital. For patients in Wolverhampton, he set about bringing the highest quality orthopaedic service to that part of the west Midlands. John Charnley had only just performed the first effective total hip replacement in 1962 and Derek, having visited, observed and assisted in the procedure, is reputed to have performed the first total hip replacement in the west Midlands shortly afterwards. Derek provided a ‘general’ orthopaedic service to the community such that would certainly defeat the capabilities of the current more specialist surgeons. The term ‘general’ can sometimes be considered a jack of all trades label, but Derek seemed a master of all specialties. A single list might include a total hip replacement, a spinal decompression and surgery to a child with congenital hip dysplasia. I recall a six-year-old boy in the operating theatre with a complete laceration of his radial nerve at the elbow and watching as Derek carefully pared the ends over a wooden board and repaired the nerve with fine sutures and the assistance of magnifying spectacles. The child made a full neurological recovery. He rarely felt the need to refer patients outside to specialist centres except in exceptional circumstances. At the time in Wolverhampton, when I was Derek’s registrar in 1981, there were only three orthopaedic consultants; in 2025 there were more than 20 and increasing. Derek was strong in temperament and was not slow in making his feelings known, but these energies were at all times exercised in his concern for the welfare of his patients. He was a good, pragmatic teacher armed with a wealth of experience which he would freely pass on to his juniors. He had an extensive medico-legal practice and just a few months before his death he remarked to me that mistakes were made when ‘you don’t listen, you don’t look and you don’t feel’ – a maxim I repeat, with attribution, to medical students regularly. Derek’s energy and enthusiasm, that he demonstrated in his clinical work, continued into his retirement, where he had many passions, particularly his love of orchids, gardening, cooking, tropical fish and golf. He had a decent wine cellar and was an active freemason. With his wife Susan he enjoyed a long and productive retirement, sharing their interests in classical music, worldwide travel, antique fairs and Tudor history. He died on 1 March 2025 aged 97.