Irene Irving was a senior lecturer in paediatric surgery at the University of Liverpool and a consultant paediatric surgeon at the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital (Alder Hey) who managed to combine her career with bringing up three children on her own after the early death of her husband. She was born in Liverpool, the daughter of George Stanley Irving, a chemical engineer, and Mary Ellen Irving née Stockley. Apart from a few months when she was evacuated to north Wales at the beginning of the Second World War, she spent her whole life in Liverpool. The city was heavily bombed during the war and she recalled leaving an air raid shelter one night to get a book and finding an incendiary bomb had landed in the front garden. She and her father quickly piled sandbags on it, preventing it from exploding and saving her family. She was educated at Broughton Hall Convent High School and then, in 1945, at the age of 17, went on to study medicine at Liverpool University on a state scholarship. She was the outstanding student of her year and grew up very rapidly in the company of many ex-service students. Inspired by her ex RAF friends, she learnt to fly in her third year and gained her pilot’s licence in 1948. Her only brother Francis was a pioneering glider pilot and aeronautics expert. After qualifying in 1952, her first house posts were in surgery and medicine at the Royal Infirmary. Deciding against adult surgery, she then took a senior house officer post in the newly-established academic department of paediatric surgery at Alder Hey under the inspirational leadership of Peter Paul Rickham, one of the first to specialise in the surgical care of children, along with Isabella Forshall. Irving was immediately fascinated by paediatric and especially neonatal surgery and, inspired by Forshall, she decided to make paediatrics her specialty. But first she had to train in general surgeon. After a year demonstrating in the medical school and then six months of casualty work, she became Philip Hawe’s first female registrar at the David Lewis Northern Hospital. She gained her FRCS in 1957. She returned to paediatric surgery in 1958, as a registrar to Forshall. She married Louis Desmet in June 1960 and had three children in rapid succession. She moved to the post of clinical assistant at Alder Hey and Birkenhead Children’s hospitals, a part-clinical, part-research post. During this time, she wrote her ChM thesis on ‘Exomphalos with macroglossia’ and gained her degree in 1969. Louis had been an oyster farmer in Belgium and then ran a hotel in Liverpool largely occupied by long-term resident elderly. Irene described how she would often have to be the hotel cook in addition to her mothering and work duties. Unfortunately, Louis died of cancer in 1973, leaving her to bring up their three children then aged nine, 10 and 12. The youngest was born with a dislocated hip and spent almost five years in hospital, once for a continuous period of 12 months, during which time Irene visited her every day. Irene made the difficult decision to resume full-time clinical surgery and, after a period as a locum consultant, in 1974 she was appointed to a post as lecturer (later senior lecturer) with consultant status in the newly-formed university department of paediatric surgery at Alder Hey. Paediatric surgery encompasses operating on children of all ages, from tiny premature new-borns to almost fully-grown teenagers. Operating on the delicate tissues of a new-born takes special skills and she was particularly good at it: she was a fine and very delicate surgeon and her patients suffered few complications. In surgical parlance, she was described as ‘having a lovely pair of hands’. Parents were happy with her explanations: she was always very careful and thorough as she was in all aspects of her life. Her patients and families adored her, as did the nurses and junior doctors. A former trainee described her as an iron fist in a velvet glove. If you did not pull your weight or let her down, she would let you know in no uncertain terms. She was always calm and very approachable. Whilst working in the academic department she did research and wrote papers as well as doing the research for and then becoming a co-author of what was the standard textbook – Rickham’s neonatal surgery (London, Butterworth, 1978 and 1990). She served on the council of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, the North Sefton Health Authority and the Liverpool Medical Institution. An excellent teacher and lecturer, she was much in demand and undertook lecture tours in Brazil and the Far East. In 1986, following two skirmishes with cancer, she took early retirement and devoted her time to being a doting grandmother, travelling, buying a grand piano and learning to play it, and singing in a choir. Irene was only five feet tall, always immaculately turned out, with an infectious sense of humour and a radiant smile. She loved reading poetry and was an avid *Telegraph* cruciverbalist. She was survived by her three children. Her sons, Paul and Laurence, are engineers, whilst her daughter, Anne, is a wood engraver and a fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. There are five grandchildren. Irene Irving died on 5 March 2020 at the age of 91. Because of the corona virus pandemic, she had a family-only funeral with six attendees, with others linking in by video.