So you want to be ... a medical oncologist

We are all influenced in our choice of career by senior doctors that we come into contact with as medical students or junior doctors. I had such an influential encounter as a student at Barts. Professor Gordon Hamilton-Fairley was a new breed in a fledgling specialty which was burgeoning in the USA as a result of dramatic advances in the treatment of patients with haematological malignancies, especially Hodgkin's disease. His appeared to be a rather maverick world, the treatments could not be found in any textbook and patients were scattered the length and breadth of the hospital.