Born in 1925 in Lewisham, London, to a Welsh family, Margaret Siriol Colley spent some years at Roedean before later being evacuated to Nova Scotia in Canada during the second world war. It was there at Dalhousie University that she began her medical studies. These were concluded at St Andrew’s in Scotland where she graduated in 1948. She took up her first post at the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich before moving to Chatham, where she met fellow doctor Nigel Colley, whom she married in 1950.

The couple established two practices in the Bramcote and Beeston areas of Nottingham. This was at a time when female doctors were few and far between and lead to her being addressed by her patients as “Lady Doctor Margaret.” In the happy years that followed she …