Dr Max Graham

Ireland’s oldest living doctor tells all

By Editorial Staff 6th June 2026

Malcolm Graham, commonly called Max, is fast approaching (at the time of writing) 102 years of age (April 1, 2026)

He is possibly Ireland’s oldest living doctor. Max Graham was certainly the oldest practising doctor in Ireland when COVID forced his retirement in 2020, after over 70 years in the profession (1947–2020).

Though no fool, Max was born in Ireland on April 1, 1924, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman. His mother was also very religious. The family moved during his childhood but eventually settled in Castlecomer, a then coal-mining town about 40 miles from Dublin, where his father ministered to Welsh miners working there.

Max (aged nine months) in his new coat, Christmas 1924

One interesting detail from his childhood is that his mother, Connie, kept very exact records of Max’s development—height, weight, diseases, etc.—which may interest longevity researchers.

After nursery there was a period of home-schooling. He then went to Mourne Grange Prep School in County Down, and after that sat Common Entrance, and went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. At home he enjoyed shooting, swimming, tennis, and later golf, and grew to around six feet.

The family were fairly middle-class by the standards of Ireland at the time (they had servants and a tennis court). Despite this, the next move was still something of a struggle. Max did well in school but failed to get a scholarship to Trinity (one of the few failures in his life). While he did get a bursary as a clergyman’s son to attend Trinity to study medicine, he still had to earn money in the summers by helping with the harvest, and would cycle home 40 miles, putting his luggage on the train. One feat in these years was to cycle around the coast of Ireland on his three-speed Raleigh.

While at Trinity, Max was resident in Number Two TCD, right at the top, overlooking the Provost’s Garden and Nassau Street. In some ways, you could argue Trinity was ahead of its time in terms of ‘gender confusion’, with roommates Alan Sweetman and Alan Brown referring to one another as ‘wives’. Max himself once dressed up as a woman to collect money for charity during Trinity Rag Week 1944—something he did only once. It should be added that Max was actually a fairly traditional, conservative, and religious man.

Max and Daphne on their wedding day, August 13, 1947

Max met my grandmother while at Trinity; it was very much a medical romance. My grandmother, Daphne Dooley (her father had sent her there so she would have a career if no husband was found), was also studying medicine. In the years above, he first met her at the Patrick Dunne Hospital, where she was resident, and he had the rather unromantic task of testing urine.

Max still fondly remembers Daphne as being great fun: going ballroom-dancing above the Metropole Cinema on O’Connell Street, and cycling together in the mountains around Dublin. Max remembers eating out at Dolphin—the best was at Jammet’s on Nassau Street, where a good meal cost seven shillings and sixpence. It was not all fun and games, however, as Daphne, who was in the year above, helped Max through his exams (which she would be doing a year ahead of him). Max thinks Daphne was smarter than he was.

“Would I do anything different? Yes. I don’t think so. I have had a very interesting and happy life, and two very nice wives who were very good to me, and we got along very well together.”

Max was very sporty, playing tennis (they had a court in the rectory). He also enjoyed squash and eventually became Trinity champion, though he was usually soundly beaten by the Oxford and Cambridge teams, and recently, smilingly, observed that he was good, but not that good.

Max and his mother, Connie, at his graduation from Trinity College Dublin in 1947

Max got his first job in England in 1946, as he explained there were more jobs and better pay. While in England, in Chichester, Max caught TB. This was followed by a year of rehabilitation and proved an important crossroads in his career: until that point he would most likely have become a GP, but he now thought about his options and talked with Louis Werner, a friend and mentor, and his uncle Togo Graham (Thomas Octwill Graham), an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon who had been president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland from 1942–1944. Max decided to specialise in eye surgery and, with Togo’s help, obtained his next post at the Victoria Infirmary (1949–50), where he began to learn about eye-surgery.

Togo may have helped open the door for my grandfather, but after he went through it, his progress was very much on his own merit. Several times in our recent discussions he emphasised how hard he had had to study and work as a doctor for all his qualifications.

Indeed, while Max benefited from family networks, his position in Ireland was quite anonymous, and this was part of the motivation for his move to England. While he was at Trinity, Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin said that attending Trinity was not merely a sin but a mortal sin—something Max found very amusing in later years.

On applying for some benefit in Ireland because of his TB, he was refused on the grounds of his rectory address, with the GP saying, ‘this is not for the likes of you’. Max did eventually get the benefit, but only by directly appealing to the Minister for Health—likely Noel Browne (Minister 1948–1951), who had TB himself as a child.

Max in the 1950s

Max married Daphne in 1947, and they had two sons: my late father Malcolm in 1949 and my uncle Charles in 1956.

There then followed work for a few years (1950–1953) in Birmingham (which he did not like, but where he gained valuable experience), and then in London. In London (1953–1958), Daphne worked as a locum doctor in the same surgery where the notorious Kray brother patients were registered, though we do not know if she ever treated them.

Max eventually obtained the post of eye surgeon in Cardiff in 1958, where he later became head surgeon following the retirement of Sir James William Tudor Thomas in 1984. A few years ago he told me with some satisfaction that he had beaten another rival candidate for the post who had BTA—“Been To America”—which at the time was considered a mark of distinction.

During this time he played a large part in the creation and design of the new eye department in the new hospital in Cardiff in 1972. He tended to play on Welsh national feeling to get the equipment he wanted, suggesting there was a risk that patients might desert the hospital in Bristol. While primarily a clinician, he did help to write just under a dozen research papers between 1958 and the early 1980s.

In 1984 he retired from surgery, which he had found very stressful. Having looked at actuarial tables for surgeons who kept practising, and not liking what he saw, he stepped back from clinical work. He returned to Ireland, to Ballsbridge in Dublin, near where Daphne had grown up, and much preferred Dublin to Cardiff.

While retired from surgery, he carried on with medical-legal work until 2020 (being ready to testify as an expert witness in court cases), which of course meant keeping his training up to date and attending conferences, where readers of this journal may have encountered him.

Max said he had most fun in life as a student and in retirement.

Sadly, my grandmother died in 2000, and a little later Max married a widow called Evelyn, and they remain married to this day.

Max kept going with many things for a long time. As mentioned, he practised until the age of 95, played golf until a similar age, and kept driving short distances until he was 100—before reluctantly giving it up. He has also kept more of his hair than is frankly fair.

He was something of a technological enthusiast: when on holiday with my grandmother, he would visit other eye departments to see what equipment they had. Around the year 2000 he taught himself to use a computer and continued using email until 2020. He also expressed interest in smartphones and recently asked how much laptops cost. Over the course of his career he witnessed immense changes, seeing the treatment of cataracts completely transformed—twice.

Dr Max Graham relaxing at his home in Ballsbridge

At present, Max still lives in the same home he purchased over 40 years ago in Ballsbridge, albeit now with a full-time carer. His memory for the present is distinctly hazy; however, his memory for his childhood and early life remains extremely sharp (a large part of what I have written here comes from recent conversations). While we cannot be sure how long Max will continue to defy actuarial tables, his end will, in a sense, lead to a return to Trinity after more than 75 years, as he has left his body to the medical school.

I will, however, leave the final word about his life to Max himself, from March 10, 2026:

“Would I do anything different? Yes. I don’t think so. I have had a very interesting and happy life, and two very nice wives who were very good to me, and we got along very well together.”