Then Harold Gillies created with the basic elements of surgery and the penetrating eye of an artist his brand-new science of facial repair, though until the Armistice his notion of returning casualties to the world looking roughly like human beings attracted derision from many senior officers, to whom it was a matter of supreme indifference if a man got his face shot off or his backside.

But the Government's enthusiasm outran its supply of trained plastic surgeons, who were as scarce as trained pilots. Apart from Graham Trevose, there were only four, installed in special new units round London. Gillies, being the senior man, insisted on first choice and went to Basingstoke in Hampshire (it was convenient for his fly-fishing). An unknown surgeon called Archie McIndoe descended on the charming little local hospital at East Grinstead in Sussex. But Graham went nowhere. He had been overlooked, he assumed deliberately.

Graham was a realist. He knew he was dismissed by his profession as a 'beauty doctor', a trivial practitioner, a refurbisher of distraught dйbutantes who had inherited daddy's nose along with his money. He had admittedly specialized in offering hope to young actresses who saw their names one day in lights, or to old actresses for whom the lights were starting to dim. He had erased the scars of hunting accidents from the cheeks as neatly as those of dissipation from below the eyes, and the 'Trevose nose' was famous in London society-a little too famous: women were starting to recognize its distinctive handiwork across crowded cocktail parties. Perhaps he had made and spent too much money, lived too fashionably. Perhaps his private life unfitted him for employment by His Majesty. He had recently had a close shave from the General Medical Council over the famous 'infamous conduct'. Or perhaps, he told himself wearily, some stupid clerk in the Ministry had simply mislaid his file.