Beverley John Abel (Bev) was born in Nottinghamshire in 1943. His parents, Albert and Winifred, ran a butcher’s shop and the family, which included Bev and his younger sister Wendy, lived above it. When he was two years old he suffered from rickets and had to wear leg splints for a time. From early

David Farrar was appointed as a consultant urological surgeon at Selly Oak Hospital in 1978 and, in 1993, with hospital mergers, moved to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, where he remained until his retirement in 2003. He was born on 3 July 1942 in Rawdon, Yorkshire, the only son of James

Pradip Basu was a urological and general surgeon in Lincoln. He was born on 4 January 1942 into a medical family in Calcutta, India, the sixth child of Bibhuti Bhusan and Durga Rani Basu née Sinha. His grandfather and father qualified in Calcutta; his father became chief medical officer to the east