Michael Dixon was born in Esher on 14 August 1922. During the second world war he studied medicine at London University and trained at St Mary’s Hospital, passing his MB,BS in 1944. He did house jobs at St Mary’s and at the Central Middlesex Hospital before becoming surgeon in charge of the Varicose

Thomas John Starling Patterson (TP) was a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon in Oxford. He was born on 27 November 1920 in Melbourne, where his father, Sydney Wentworth Patterson, was working as a physician. His mother, Muriel Patterson née Starling, was the daughter of Ernest Starling, a