The TWJ Foundation celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. A black-tie dinner was held at the Apothecaries’ Hall in London on Friday 3 May, with the President, David Wright, in the chair. The evening brought together TWJ Trustees, some of our fellowship hosts, former fellows, donors and TWJ family members.
The TWJ Foundation was founded as a charitable trust in 1974 by Pat Jobson and David Wright, consultant colleagues in Guildford, with the specific aim of helping patients with deafness overcome their disability. The Foundation offers research and educational grants to otolaryngologists and other related audiological professionals working in the British National Health Service and in the Republic of Ireland in order to achieve this goal. It was made possible by the generosity of Lilian Wickham Higgs, who was deaf, and the Foundation was set up in the name of her father Thomas Wickham-Jones (‘TWJ’, 1847-1929). 
Each year the TWJ Foundation awards 12-month Major Fellowships in clinical otology, neurotology, implantation otology and skull-base surgery with opportunities for research. It currently has posts in Toronto, Halifax (Nova Scotia), Vancouver, Auckland and Cambridge (England). It also offers short fellowships to European centres every year, together with thesis and other small grants on an ad hoc basis; in addition it funds the Otology Short Papers prize for the Royal Society of Medicine.
More than fifty per cent of currently practising British otologists have been benefited in some way from receiving a TWJ grant, and it is the aim of the Foundation to continue to reach as many young otologists in training as possible from all parts of the British Isles. Here’s to the next 50 years! 
Photos from top:
Trustees and Fellowship hosts
The anniversary dinner at the Apothecaries’ Hall in London
Two Presidents - Tim Mitchell and David Wright
