John Trevillian Wright

John Trevillian Wright spent much of his childhood in South America, where his father was a manager for an oil company. He attended Shrewsbury School and spent the holidays in South America and in the English countryside. These times, when he was often unaccompanied, fostered his independent spirit and sense of adventure from an early age: on one occasion, he jumped from the deck of one transatlantic liner to another. In addition to showing academic prowess, he was an excellent cross country runner and was taught to row by his father, with family trips in a camping skiff on the Thames.

He went up to Worcester College, Oxford, in 1940, crediting his place, characteristically modestly, to the correct identification at interview of a hornbeam tree in the quad. He won a Price university scholarship in anatomy and physiology, and after being admitted to the London Hospital Medical College in 1942, won prizes there in surgery, pathology, and chemical pathology. He undertook war service in and around London, and graduated in December 1944. On 20 January 1945 he married Kate Elliott, who was to be his wife for 56 years.

His house officer posts were at the London Hospital and his national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps between 1946 and 1948. He was senior registrar at St George’s Hospital in …