John Erskine Macolm was the son of John Malcolm, head of the department of agricultural engineering at Glasgow University, and Jane Matilda née Erskine, whose father was a landowner. He was born in Stirling on 28 May 1914. He was educated at Stirling High School, where he won gold medals in French a

John Garraway was educated at Eastbourne College and the Middlesex Hospital. On graduating he joined the RAF, in which he served in North Africa and in the RAF hospital in Vereeniging, South Africa, where he married Margaret Lapping in June 1944. After the war he returned to England to serve in vari