Jimmy James

John Henri James, known as Jimmy, was born in Lusaka (then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia). He was the youngest son of a Dutch protestant missionary and an English Methodist minister. He was educated in Kingswood School, Bath, a missionary school. He attended St Andrews University to study classics but changed to medicine in his first year, with no science, and graduated in 1966. He started married life as a student being supported by his wife, Judith, a teacher. He was left wing, member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, president of the New Left club, and was described by 1966 year book as “a perpetual president.”

He took his FRCS Edinburgh in 1972, at which time he was a plastic surgery registrar in Lothian health board. When he wasn’t appointed senior registrar in Edinburgh he went to Aarhus, Denmark, instead.

In 1977 to 1981 he was consultant reconstructive and leprosy surgeon (and, incidentally, pilot) with …