About the Author

Stanley Osborn Aylett, MBE, FRCS (1911- 2003), won an open scholarship to King's College Hospital, graduating with first-class honors in Physiology in 1932 and in Medicine in 1935. After six years serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps he went on to become a distinguished consultant surgeon, known for the fastest fingers in the trade, and specializing in the inflammatory bowel disease colitis, for which he pioneered a revolutionary treatment. He was Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons and a member of the Académie de Chirurgie Française, among other distinctions. He published widely in his field and for his services in opening up Sandbostel concentration camp he received the French Croix d'Honneur. After the war he regularly returned to France, for whose people he felt a great affinity.