James Dudfield Rose graduated MB BS from the medical school in Newcastle (then part of Durham University) in 1930 and went to Germany in 1936 to study gastroscopy, returning with a permanent impression of the rise of Nazism. Commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was evacuated from Dunkirk, was at the siege of Tobruk, and was sent to the liberated concentration camp at Belsen. After the war he returned to become consultant surgeon at Newcastle General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne. He specialised in biliary tract surgery; with colleagues in Lyons he published early work on biliary manometry. He became president of the North of England Surgical Society and retired from surgery in 1977. Always fascinated by heretical ideas, after retiring he practised homoeopathy and became interested in Catharism. He was an accomplished photographer, weaver and embroiderer and loved Northumberland, its history, landscape and culture. He died of cerebrovascular disease on 7 May 1992 aged 84 years, and was survived by his wife, his son, a physician, a daughter and four grandchildren.