After graduating in medicine in 1947, Hargrave took a house job at Westminster Hospital after which he completed his national service with the Royal Air Force in Egypt and Kenya.

Michael Hargrave was born on 8 December 1923, in Simla, British India, the elder of two sons of a decorated First World War pilot who was posted there by the Royal Air Force.

[4] In April 1945, he was among eleven medical students from Westminster who volunteered to help relieve a famine in Holland, a part of the Netherlands still occupied by the Germans but awaiting liberation.

He led this process in hut 210 and performed treatments including the excision of eyelid cysts and tuberculous glands in the neck.

[2] He completed his national service with the Royal Air Force[8] in Egypt and Kenya, returning to Wootton Bassett in 1950 to become a general practitioner.

His diary, written for his mother, was published by Imperial College Press in 2014,[1] with all royalties donated to Amnesty International and the polio charity Rotary Club PolioPlus.