John Walkden was a senior orthopaedic registrar at the United Liverpool Hospitals and orthopaedic and surgical registrar to the professorial unit of Broadgreen Hospital Liverpool. He then became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at West Cheshire and Central Wirral Hospitals. He was a member of the Li

Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, on September 12, 1909, the elder son of Arnold Kirz, technical manager of a textile concern, and Josephine, née Neumann. He studied at Prague University and qualified in 1935. He began his career as a surgeon as an assistant in a teaching unit. In 1939 he came

Margaret Challis was a consultant ophthalmologist at Whipps Cross Hospital. Her parents were both doctors – her father, John Humphrey Thornton Challis, was a consultant anaesthetist at the London Hospital and her mother, Margaret Llewelyn Jones, a general practitioner in Woodford, Essex. Margaret wa

Paul Atkins was a consultant surgeon in Liverpool. He was born on 26 June 1933, into a musical family. His father George, known as 'Tommy', made and repaired church organs, including the one in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. His mother Dorothy was a dressmaker. As a student at King's College Hospit

James Somervell continued his family’s tradition of missionary work in India. He was born on 23 April 1927 in Kodaikanal, southern India. His father, Theodore Howard Somervell, was a surgeon and mountaineer, who took part in the ill-fated 1922 and 1924 Mallory expeditions to conquer Everest. He beca

George Willett was born on 11 February 1933 at Leigh, Lancashire, the son of George Willett, a canon of the Church of England and his wife Beatrice, née Juniper. Willett won a music scholarship at Denstone College and was runner-up in the organ scholarship examination for Gonville and Caius College

Mary Shepherd was a former consultant thoracic surgeon at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex. She was born at Forest Hill, London, on 4 July 1933, the youngest of the two children of George Raymond Shepherd, an electrical and mechanical engineer, and Florence May Savile, whose father and grandfather had

Isabella Forshall was born and spent her childhood in affluent surroundings in Sussex. Details of her family are not recorded but she was educated privately at home where her mother, who read classics at Girton College, Cambridge in the 1890s, had a powerful influence, imbuing her with a keen apprec

Andrew Jowett was born in Sunderland in 1933, where his father, Ronald, an honorary FRCS, was an ENT surgeon and a member of the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board. Andrew was educated at Sedbergh School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in 1954. He subsequently went on to the

Roger Wilkes had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy as an officer and surgeon serving at home and at sea in aircraft carriers. In 1982 he was the senior surgeon at sea on SS *Canberra* during the Falklands War. Later he was surgeon commodore and dean of naval medicine. Roger was born in Sme

Michael Hackett, or Mike, as he was always known, was born on 6 August 1931 in Morecambe, Lancashire. He was the son of Jack Hackett, editor of *The Morecombe Visitor* and the nephew of Desmond Hackett, the well-known *Daily Express* sports writer. He was educated at Preston Catholic College and pro