This is a lovely and unusual book: the ‘twin’ biography of John Colquhoun, orthopaedic surgeon (1899 – 1974) and Joyce McGrath (his patient) Arts Librarian at the State Library of Victoria, and portrait painter, born 1925. The lives of these two interesting and fascinating characters first crossed when the four-year-old Joyce, afflicted with tuberculosis of the hip, was a patient of the enigmatic young Dr Colquhoun. Much later meetings were in the early 1960s, when theTalented, young(ish) portrait painter was commissioned to paint the now much-respected late-career doctor. Not only does Jan Harper capture the essence of her two characters, but she also creates a vivid picture of their early backgrounds and the worlds of medicine, changing medical practice and the local art world, especially in the field of portraiture and tonal impressionism. Harper is particularly good on the new and evolving field of orthopaedic surgery – who would now be aware of the fervent belief in heliopathy and open air and sun treatment (for bone and joint diseases and later polio) that was the founding tenet of the establishment of the The Orthopaedic Hospital for Children? And how different was the practice of ALL branches of medicine before the advent of penicillin and other antibiotics in the 1940s? Such different lives, different personalities, different expectations. An extremely well-written and thought-provoking biography.