You might think: Why have I called this personal history "The Luckiest Boy in Germany"? Because all my life I have had one lucky break after another. I was born in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression and so not a good year, but for me it was a very good year: I missed the First World War and as the Second World War finished in 1945, I was too young to fight. In 1938, during the Kristallnacht, our Modesalon on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin was destroyed by the Nazis, and my mother fled to England. I was the youngest in the family, and she took me with her, while my brother Erik was left behind and ended up in a Nazi "Zwangsarbeitslager" (Forced Labour Camp). Sadly, all my mother's relatives left in Germany were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. In England my luck continued. At first I lived with Mr & Mrs Clamp and they treated me as if I were their own child. English became my first language; in 1940 I went to Ashby Boys' Grammar School and in 1942 I moved to London. I wanted to study medicine and applied to do 1st MB at Chelsea Polytechnic and was only offered a place on their pre-1stMB course, not what I wanted. Luckily when I had my interview with one of the tutors at the beginning of the year, he saw my School Certificate results and said: 'I see from your exam results that in the Pre-1st MB course you would be repeating what you have already done at school, so I am transferring you to the 1st MB course.' In June 1945 I passed this exam. When I applied to all the London medical schools, to study medicine proper I didn't get a place; University College London put me on their reserve list. I had already started a degree course at Chelsea Polytechnic, when I had a letter from UCL offering me a place after all. God! I was pleased! I qualified in July 1950 when I was still 21. By this time, I wanted to live in England, so I became a British citizen. In 1948 the Labour government introduced the National Health Service in which I was lucky to work for the next 40 years. I wanted to work at University College Hospital, my Alma Mater, but had no luck. I had almost given up hope of getting a job there when I was appointed House Physician at the new UCH outpost at St Pancras Hospital. After I finished this job I was called up and posted to Mauritius. While there I did my first piece of research: "Filariasis in Mauritius" published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine. After the army I wanted to work at UCH and do research, but at first had no luck. Three years later, in 1956, I was appointed Resident Clinical Pathologist. While there I began my study of the abnormal haemoglobins and the assembly of the haemoglobin molecule. In 1958, I got the research support I needed from the Beit Memorial Fellowship Trust. I worked in Biochemistry at UCL and then in the Medical Unit at UCH. In between I spent a year in America on a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship. When I came back to England I got a MD and PhD, was elected FRCP and Fellow of University College; after that I moved up the academic/NHS ladder at University College Hospital Medical School. For all this to happen you have to have a mentor and I was lucky to have the support of two: Professor Lord Rosenheim, Max, President of the Royal College of Physicians and Professor Prankerd, Tom, the first Professor of Haematology at UCHMS, who in 1964 appointed me in his MRC Group at UCHMS as a Senior Lecturer/Consultant' enabling me in 1980 to succeed him as Professor of Haematology. Last, but not least, I was also extremely lucky in my personal life: First in having such a caring and supportive mother. Then, in 1958 I had by far the greatest bit of luck of my life: I met, fell in love with and married Yvonne, who not only loved me but encouraged me in my endeavours for the rest of my life. All the things I was able to do and enjoy during the last fifty years, I could not have done without her.