Alan Edward Wood

Alan Edward (“Tony”) Wood was at East Barnet Grammar School when he read Men against Microbes by JD Ratcliffe and decided at the age of 12 that he wanted to do medicine. But he had to escape three times from bombed out London family houses, become a senior messenger with the National Fire Service, attend over 100 blitz incidents, serve as a volunteer in the Fleet Air Arm, and qualify as a radio mechanic before he could achieve enough academic qualifications to be accepted by the London Hospital Medical College, Whitechapel, and then in the holidays he worked nights as a ward orderly at Mile End Hospital doing 12 hour shifts, 8 pm to 8 am, to get what he later described as “a good education for budding doctors.”

For most of his life he kept …