John Stanley Mornington Zorab

John Stanley Mornington Zorab was born on 16 January 1929 into a strong medical family, all of his five brothers going into medicine or dentistry. John was the youngest and the last survivor of his generation. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and then read medicine at Guys, qualifying MRCS LRCP in 1957.

By all accounts he had moments of considerable non-conformity at medical school. In cahoots with his mother, he made some printed notepaper purporting to come from the Countess Schleswig-Holstein announcing that the countess would be attending the final of the Hospitals Rugby Cup and would be pleased to be looked after in suitable fashion. There was much fussing about in the higher echelons and the dean, the vice chancellor and the lord mayor all turned out. The countess (alias John's mother) turned up looking very regal in a Rolls Royce hired by John and was danced attendance on by the sycophants. He never really had the heart to tell them.

He married Shirley in 1953, and their marriage was to prove a great and lasting success for them both for over 50 years. He trained in anaesthesia at Guy's, Westminster, and Southampton, under Sir Geoffrey Organe and Cyril Scurr from the Westminster, Phillip Helliwell from Guy's, and Patrick Shackleton from Southampton, obtaining his FFARCS (now FRCA) in 1962.

John was appointed to his consultant post at Frenchay in mid-1966, where he met Peter Baskett …