Robert Havard

Robert Emlyn Havard (March 15, 1901 – July 27, 1985) was the physician of C. S. Lewis, his wife Joy Davidman, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Biography Havard was born in South Kyme, Lincolnshire. He studied chemistry at Oxford, and medicine at Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital in London. He held a number of research posts and co-authored over twenty scientific publications before becoming a General Practitioner in Oxford, where he met Lewis in 1934. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1931.

In 1943, Havard was called up for service and worked as a medical officer in the Royal Navy; he then continued his GP work until 1968, when he retired and moved to the Isle of Wight.

He was married to Grace Mary Middleton and they had five children.

Havard was a member of the Oxford-based Inklings. Lewis invited him to join because of the literary interests he shared with that group. Havard was sometimes referred to by the Inklings as the "Useless Quack," mainly because Warren Lewis once called him so upon being irritated by his tardiness, and his brother, Jack, thought it quite amusing at the time and caused the nickname to continue. The abbreviation "U.Q." was thereafter a common reference to Havard.

Lewis dedicated his novel, Prince Caspian, to Havard’s daughter Mary.

Hugo Dyson once called him "Humphrey" when he could not remember his name. After that, Havard was quite frequently known as "Dr. Humphrey Havard," to the extent that when Douglas Gresham came to know him years later and became his patient, it was some time before he discovered Robert Havard's actual name was not really Humphrey.