John Desmond Cronin (1 March 1916 – 3 January 1986) was a British surgeon and Labour Party politician. Early life and education He was born in Simla, British India (since 1947 known as Shimla), the summer capital of India in the days of the British Raj. The family, like many others living in India at the time, had moved there to escape the heat and disease of India's lower altitudes during the summer months. His father, John Patrick Cronin (1889–1952), a director of Lever Brothers, was Lord Leverhulme's representative in India and later Chairman of Horlicks, Australia. Cronin spent the first three years of his life in India until the family returned to their home in Hornsey Lane, Highgate, London in 1919. In 1929, the family moved to Woodside Park near Totteridge in North East Finchley. Cronin was educated at St Aloysius' College in Highgate from 1923 to 1924, then at Hodder House, the preparatory school for Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, Lancashire, from 1924 to 1930 before going on to Stonyhurst where he studied until 1933. Cronin wanted to join the Royal Navy, but his father decided he was to have a career in medicine, and sent him to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College. He became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1939, and received a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery in 1940. He was the Resident Surgeon at Grimsby and District Hospital from 1940 to 1941. Wartime and medical career Cronin became surgical registrar and surgeon in the Emergency Medical Service at the Royal Free Hospital. He joined the army in 1942, serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was made a graded surgeon after a few months spent as a general duty officer. He commanded 50 pioneers in the Normandy landings in 1944 and later worked as a surgeon just outside Caen. He was posted to India at the end of 1944 and was promoted in 1945 to major and then to acting lieutenant colonel. He then served in Burma, working with the forward troops before returning to England in 1946 to live in Regents Park Road near Regent's Park, London; he had at that time a consulting room in Harley Street. In 1947, he passed the examinations to become a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and was appointed as assistant orthopaedic surgeon at the Prince