Professor Anthony Roberts OBE started life as the only child of a divorced mother living in half a small bungalow and who, because of TB, did not start at his local primary school until nearly eight years old. There he won his first scholarship to a public school after which he graduated, researched, worked, and lectured as an engineer. After ten years, with another scholarship, he changed to medicine. Five years later after studying at four universities on three continents and with seven degrees, he qualified and then realised his ambition to become a surgeon. After twelve years of training, he became a consultant plastic and hand surgeon at the famous Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and was also director of the Oxford Regional Burn Unit. He has worked around the world in forty-five countries and has operated in twenty-five of them. Somehow, he found time to publish research on burn injuries and management which involved creating a medical charity of which HRH the Duke of Kent is Patron and to which the income from this book is dedicated.