Rook's Book

Spotted in an Oxfam shop near the Wigmore Hall, quite possibly Marylebone High Street. Snapped because I thought it odd that anyone who really wanted or needed such a book would want to buy an old one from Oxfam, even one that does not look as if it has been used all that much. Or, in the age of computers, would want it in print format at all.

Then, I happened to spot the word Rook at the top of the spine, the name, as it happens, of a doctor I consulted from time to time during my childhood. Back in the olden days when children trotted across town to outpatient appointments without any kind of escort...

So I check with google to come across reference 1, which makes it quite clear that this Rook is the same as my Rook. I had never realised that he was quite as eminent in his profession as he clearly was. He wrote, it seems, around one third of the first edition of this textbook, perhaps a bit thinner then than the ninth edition is now. See reference 2.

And I certainly never knew that he had been an RAF squadron leader during the second world war, probably as a doctor rather than as a pilot. Rather, I imagine, as my own father had been an army dentist.

Reference 1: http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/3849.

Reference 2: http://www.rooksdermatology.com/.