John Charles Leedham-Green was born in Birmingham on 30 October 1902, eldest son of Charles Albert Leedham-Green FRCS (1867-1931), sometime Professor of Surgery at Birmingham University, and his wife, Ethel, née Lees. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read chemist

Anthony Harvard Baker was born at North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest son of the Reverend Anthony Charles Baker a Methodist minister; his second name recalled a distant relationship to John Harvard who had bequeathed his library to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century and had given his

James Reid was born in Bournemouth on 24 October 1906, the son of George Alexander Reid, a general practitioner, and his wife Muriel, née Hopwood. He was educated at Hailey Preparatory School in Bournemouth, and Marlborough College, Wiltshire. He then went to Oxford University and on to St George's