Forties Post – Plastic Fantastic – Andrew Wilson shines the spotlight on a pioneering plastic surgeon

A hero in many people's books and even a war hero to others - John was recognised in his lifetime by his contemporaries, his patients and in letters that made their way into the local newspaper, the Staffordshire Sentinel. Over time that gradually fell away, to the point where, if asked, few people would ever have heard of John Grocott - apart from his former patients, for whom the universal question appears to have been: "How do you say thank you to someone who has made my life worth living?"

- By Andrew Wilson

Some people groomed for greatness are destined to remain in the shadows for O decades. Not that this would have bothered the handsome, dashing but unassuming surgeon John Grocott one bit.

He rubbed shoulders more often than most with fame and good fortune but left the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary (NSRI) without fuss, or fanfare - retiring quietly to a life of working on his much-loved cars, keeping finches and grafting orchids with all the skill and surgical precision which made him such a renowned figure in what are regarded as the early days of modern plastic surgery. No one seeing him then could have imagined he was the man behind the mask who had changed the lives of hundreds of people for the better. Someone who, at the cutting edge of a surgical speciality, could restore, reconstruct or alter a human body. And someone who worked alongside the father of modern plastic surgery, Sir Harold Gillies, who referred to him as "an excellent plastic surgeon". It's only now, following the launch of a new book compiled and written by Ros Unwin, that John Grocott's own genius might yet be rediscovered.

There's already a growing movement to include him in Stoke-on-Trent's Hall of Fame, which includes the likes of football's first knight and inaugural winner of the Ballon d'Or, Sir Stanley Matthews; author Arnold Bennett; ceramic giants Josiah Wedgwood, Thomas Minton, William Moorcroft and Clarice Cliff; Spitfire inventor Reginald Mitchell; wireless telegraphy innovator Sir Oliver Lodge; and even RMS Titanic's Captain Edward John Smith.