Peter James Witherow was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Bristol Children’s Hospital, Bristol Royal Infirmary and Winford Orthopaedic Hospital. He was born in Birmingham in 1935, the son of James Witherow, a doctor, and Greta Eileen Witherow née Roberts. He was educated at Epsom College and studied medicine at Birmingham University, where he became chairman of the University Medical Students’ Society and represented the university at judo. He qualified in 1958. After three junior hospital appointments, he carried out his National Service in the Colonial Service in Basutoland in southern Africa for three years. He returned to surgical training in Birmingham and Oswestry, where he was seconded for six months to the Rheumatism Foundation Hospital in Heinola, Finland. He was appointed as successor to Arthur Eyre-Brook in Bristol in 1973 and took over and developed an extensive single-handed paediatric and young adult orthopaedic and spinal deformity service. He was a first-class surgical teacher and head of the Bristol training programme; the Witherow post was always considered one of the ‘must do’ attachments for any trainee in the south west. He was forward thinking and, with radiology colleagues, established the first skeletal dysplasia clinic and database in the country, which still largely exists in its original format. The most telling metric of his significant clinical workload is the fact that he has now been replaced by 10 paediatric and five spinal deformity surgeons. In addition to his extensive clinical workload, he was an international leader, serving with distinction on the executive of the European Paediatric Orthopaedic Society, the British Scoliosis Society and the Cerebral Palsy Surgical Society. He was also president of the British Society for Children’s Orthopaedic Surgery. He had an extensive research interest and published widely, with a particular interest in cerebral palsy. His collaboration with Jane Pyman was before its time and he would have been delighted to know that the long-term study of his initial cohort of multilevel surgery patients in cerebral palsy has been published since his death (‘Long-term outcomes following multilevel surgery in cerebral palsy’ *J Pediatr Orthop*. 2020 Aug;40[7]:351-356). Peter was a superb role model for any surgeon. He had a first-class brain and was a well-prepared and informed clinician. He was a meticulous and gifted operative surgeon with the calmest of temperaments and thoroughly committed to training. He was a kind and caring doctor who had a profound influence on several generations of children’s orthopaedic surgeons. Outside work Peter had many interests. He became an expert in each and exhibited the same desire for perfection in his hobbies as he did in his work. He was well read and loved music and played the recorder to a very high standard. He loved working with his hands, whether it was mending things or developing and printing his black and white photographs, making fibreglass kayaks or his beautiful cabinet making, lovingly crafting toys for his grandchildren. He was a member of the South Wales Potters and became an accomplished ceramicist with a potter’s wheel and kiln in the garage. His ceramics were highly valued by others but not by himself: his own high standards often led to him consigning the pots to the bin, only to be retrieved by his wife. However, occasional pieces were felt to be of a sufficient standard to be exhibited in the South Wales Potters exhibitions. He developed Parkinson’s disease in 2000 and died on 5 January 2020 after a protracted illness. He was nursed at home by Pat (née Sutton), his wife, whom he married in 1959. He left two children, Helen, a maxillofacial surgeon, and Tim, a classics scholar, and four grandchildren, who remember him not as an eminent orthopaedic surgeon but as the model aeroplane maker, the teacher of making pottery animals and for his kite flying prowess.