John Fairbank was born on 26 June 1912 in London, the only son of Sir Thomas Fairbank, the first orthopaedic surgeon to the Charing Cross Hospital, and Florence Kathleen née Ogilvie. He was educated at Wellesley House, Broadstairs, and then at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, as senior scholar,

Jim Ellis was professor of orthopaedic and accident surgery at the University of Southampton. He was born on 13 April 1912 in Selborne, Hampshire, the son of Frank Stokes Ellis, a wine merchant who went on to serve in the First World War with the Royal Fusiliers, and Ada née Parkes, whose family wer