Brian Sterry Ashby was born in Northampton on 28 August 1930, the son of Roland Sterry Ashby, an estate agent and auctioneer. His mother, Marion Elizabeth née Phillips, was a company director whose father and two brothers were all dental surgeons. He attended Waynefleet House primary school in Brackley from 1935 to 1938, Northampton Grammar School from 1938 to 1942 and Bloxham School in Oxfordshire from 1942 to 1949. At Trinity College, Cambridge he passed the natural sciences tripos in 1952 and commenced his medical training at the Westminster Hospital Medical School where he won the Hanbury prize in diseases of children. After qualifying MB, BChir in 1955, he initially worked at the Westminster Hospital as a house surgeon where Harold Ellis, whom he said inspired his surgical interests, was a registrar. The following year he specialised in paediatrics before doing his National Service, serving as a captain in the RAMC at a military hospital in Northern Ireland from 1957 to 1959. He started at St James’ Hospital, Balham in 1959. Apart from a spell at the Birmingham Accident Hospital, he stayed at St James’ until 1963 where again his interest in surgery was fostered by Andrew Desmond and Norman Tanner. A return to the Westminster was followed by a year at UCLA in San Francisco from 1966 to 1967 as a Wellcome research fellow and lecturer in the department run by Engleburt Dunphy. He was attached to the organ preservation programme investigating the use of cadaver-donor kidneys for transplantation. While there he was involved in the first successful human renal transplant operation using a cadaver-donor kidney. He continued this research with Roy Calne in the department of surgery at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in 1969. The following year he was appointed consultant surgeon with a special interest in gastroenterology to the Southend General Hospital and stayed there for 21 years until his retirement in 1991. During his time there he developed his interest in gastroenterology and particularly endoscopy and biliary surgery. He initiated an upper GI endoscopy service in 1970 which included interventional techniques such as oesophageal stricture, dilation and intubation etc. Involved in the development of the Olympus fiberoptic choledochoscope, he introduced its use in the surgery of common bile duct stones. His Hunterian lecture in 1984 was based on the experience of 150 cases of exploration of the bile duct using fiberoptic choledochoscopy. He published extensively and gave numerous papers at national and international conferences on operative choledochoscopy. On various committees within the hospital, he also participated in the management of the area health authority. A clinical tutor for the Southend District from 1986 to 1990, he was also a tutor for the college for that area from 1970 to 1975. He was a member of the British Society for Gastroenterology, the British Association of Surgical Oncologists, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a fellow of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. At university he had enjoyed small-bore rifle shooting, was champion several times and represented Cambridge in the team against Oxford in 1951 and 1952. In the 1950’s he was a member of a sports car racing club. Later in life he enjoyed gardening and collecting original art, particularly Victorian or 20th century Cornish works. He retired to Cornwall and became a volunteer guide for the National Trust at their house Trerice near Newquay. A member of the Friends of Penlee House Museum and Gallery at Penzance, he was their secretary and chairman from 2004 to 2007. He married Avis Jean Thomas, a model, in 1953 and they had a son, Philip Starry Ashby, in 1955. The marriage was dissolved in 1960 and the following year he married Gillian Dawson, a nurse. His second marriage was dissolved in 1992 and he married Coretta Crabbe, a theatre sister in 1996. He died on 26 October 2019 aged 89.