Jeremy Wilson was a consultant general surgeon at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup. He was born on 27 January 1932, the youngest child of Charles Paul Wilson and Margaret Fraser Wilson née Cameron. His early education was at Moffats School and Bryanston, before going up to Downing College, Cambridge in 1951 to read medicine. He completed his clinical studies at Middlesex Hospital, where his father was a consultant otolaryngologist. He qualified MB BCh in 1957 and was awarded the Lyell gold medal for surgery. After house jobs at the Middlesex and Mount Vernon hospitals, his surgical training included a casualty post at the Middlesex and a senior house officer appointment at Chase Farm Hospital. He obtained his FRCS in 1963. Registrar appointments at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and Central Middlesex Hospital followed, before returning to the Middlesex Hospital as a senior registrar in 1969 to work with O V Lloyd-Davies and C J B Murray. Surgical training was comprehensive in the 1960s and it was only after 17 years as a ‘junior doctor’ – six as a senior registrar – that he finally obtained a consultant appointment at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup in 1974 at the age of 42. (It was often thought in those days that teaching hospital consultants became so dependent on their senior registrars that they were reluctant to let them go!) In 1974, the new 600-bed district general hospital at Sidcup opened, replacing the ‘temporary’ wooden huts of the old Queen Mary’s, which had been built in 1917 to deal with casualties from the First World War and where Harold Gillies carried out his pioneering work on facial reconstruction. Within the first two years of its opening 25 new consultants had been appointed, replacing the old guard who retired and enlarging the departments needed in a new district general hospital. For the whole of his consultant career J P Wilson, and his colleague P E A Savage, provided a consultant-delivered general surgical service to the local community – Wilson specialising in colorectal and Savage peripheral vascular surgery. They were joined in 1985 by J G Payne. Each unit’s junior staff consisted of a house surgeon and a senior house officer (with primary fellowship) with one shared registrar. An early decision was to develop clinical services linked with surgical training so that Sidcup would become recognised as a ‘learning hospital’ and attract good calibre trainees. Soon the department was teaching medical students and house surgeons from St Thomas’ and the Westminster hospitals, and over the years 48 senior house officers and registrars were helped up the lower rungs of the surgical ladder to eventual consultant or specialist posts in the UK or abroad. Having set up a colonoscopy unit Jeremy Wilson formed a multi-disciplinary gastrointestinal service with his medical colleague, M Lancaster-Smith, co-ordinating the management of patients with inflammatory bowel disease in joint clinics. During his last year at Sidcup he mastered the then new technique of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. He retired in 1992 aged 60. A quiet but effective leader, J P Wilson was chairman of the hospital division of surgery and of the medical staff committee, a Royal College of Surgeons’ tutor and a council member of the section of coloproctology of the Royal Society of Medicine. To many founder members of the hospital, the phrase ‘the Pride of Queen Mary’s’ was always associated with Jeremy. He was instrumental in arranging for Paintings in Hospitals, of which he was a council member, to provide pictures to hang on the many blank walls in the hospital. On more than one occasion he could be found leading a party cleaning up the grounds or doing some light (and occasionally heavy) gardening. As a member of the postgraduate centre appeal committee he played an important role in raising funds that led to the building of the Frognal centre for medical studies. With a consultant body of similar age, many with young children, colleagues and their wives soon became friends, and ‘collegiality’ a feature of Queen Mary’s that made it such a happy and rewarding place in which to work. Every summer Jeremy would organise a strawberries and cream tea party for junior staff and their families, many of whom came from overseas; he was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Frognal Ramblers – a walking group of colleagues whose gentle excursions would be rewarded by a convivial pub lunch. It was at Bryanston School that Jeremy developed his love of music. William Glock held the first Summer School of Music there in 1947, before it moved to its permanent home in Dartington in 1953. From the outset Jeremy helped with the organisation of this annual festival of music-making and it was at Dartington that he met Clare Addenbrooke, a flautist studying at the Royal College of Music. They married in 1962 and had two children (James, who became an organisation consultant, and Harriet, a music critic). Jeremy was a proficient bassoonist and every summer he and Clare helped with the organisation of the Dartington Summer School of Music. He was a member of its advisory council from 1980 to 1995. With the security of a consultant appointment came the opportunity to set up home in the Old Bakery, Farningham, where he and Clare held regular chamber music concerts. They soon became known for their kindness and generous hospitality to friends and colleagues. Jeremy, in addition to developing his talent as a landscape gardener, made time to be principal bassoonist and vice chairman of the Sidcup Symphony Orchestra. The marriage was dissolved in 1985. In retirement Jeremy went on to receive a first-class honours music BA degree from York in 1996 and an MA in musicology (with a distinction) from Southampton in 1997. It was while in his first year at York that Jeremy was struck down with a severe headache, vomiting and diplopia. He was transferred to the neurosurgical unit at Hull, where a benign adenoma of the pituitary was removed by transsphenoidal hypophysectomy. Afterwards he said that he never felt better once he was on HRT! He continued to take part in the annual Dartington Summer Music School and there met Maggie Giraud, an art historian. They married in 1999. In a surgical career spanning 35 years it is impossible to quantify the number of patients whose pain and distress have been relieved or whose lives were saved by one man’s surgical skill. Over the years Jeremy Wilson demonstrated all those qualities Sir William Osler attributed to a good doctor: imperturbability, equanimity, courage in adversity and the art of detachment. He is remembered with gratitude by his patients, with esteem by his colleagues and affection by all who had the privilege of knowing him. J P Wilson died on 25 July 2020 aged 88 following a series of strokes.