My brother Wren Hoskyns, who has died aged 59 following head injuries incurred falling from his bicycle, was described by the first medical firm he worked for as an enigma. Enigmatic he may have appeared, but quirky, stubborn, idealistic, kind and driven might be more apt descriptions.
The eldest son and second child of Ann (née Wilkinson) and Benedict, he was born in Libya, where our father was working in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His education at state and independent schools and the University of Nottingham gave him a secure foundation for his development. He was passionate but also playful, unconventional, and a fabulous musician who adored and understood children. He hated being constrained, and as a young man went barefoot whenever possible.
He had won a choristership at King’s College school, Cambridge, in 1964 and the musical training and performing experience there gave him a lifelong capacity for performing, as a choral singer, folk and classical guitarist, violinist and violist. He was a vital part of the Hoskyns family musical ensembles, which others and we four siblings could muster, and for more than 20 years a key member of the Kingfisher Chorale in Leicester.
Trained as a physician, Wren used his instinctive ability to connect with children to develop a specialism in paediatrics, where neonatal and chest medicine were his particular research interests. He was much loved by his patients and staff and was described as an “exceptional clinician” at the Leicester Hospital Trust and the University of Leicester, where he was an honorary clinical tutor.
One colleague says of him: “He was kind and generous and supported trainees and fellow colleagues. He was an ‘old-fashioned’ clinician in the best sense of the word, always putting patients and their families first.”
His commitment to community and the underprivileged led him to spend two years in northern Thailand, and to volunteer in Sudan during a famine in the 1980s.
He married a fellow doctor, the psychiatrist Jane Sellers, in 1981, and she tempered his waywardness. He was extremely proud of the achievements of their two children, Robin, a conservation biologist and photographer, and Lucy, a medical student.
He inherited the Hoskyns baronetcy on the death of our father in 2010, but in keeping with his lack of conformity, never used or registered the title. Jane, Robin and Lucy, our mother, Ann, and his three siblings, Sarah, John and I, survive him.
