A Swansea cancer consultant was more than 5,000 miles from home — teaching on a course in India — when he found out he had been awarded an MBE.
Dr Martin Rolles, a consultant clinical oncologist at the South West Wales Cancer Centre at Singleton Hospital, was recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours for his services to healthcare science and cancer care.
The honour was announced while he was in Kolkata, working as a faculty member on a course that helps train the next generation of cancer doctors — and the news travelled fast.
“One of the people who was in India with me found out about it and then informed everybody. I started receiving emails and texts while I was trying to teach,” he said.
“And of course my mother has told every person in her address book.”
Dr Rolles said the first he knew of the award was a confidential letter from the Cabinet Office two months ago, and that he still has no idea who nominated him.
He was quick to share the credit with colleagues across South Wales.
“It really belongs to everyone I’ve worked with over the last 20 years in South Wales and to all the various committees I belong to,” he said.
“I’ve been really lucky to work with a fantastic bunch of people and what we have achieved, we have achieved as a team.”
He added: “We have brought cancer services in South West Wales up to national standards and European standards. There is still a long way to go but it’s a lovely place to work.”
Dr Rolles specialises in head and neck cancer and non-melanoma skin cancer. After studying zoology at the University of Bristol, he read medicine at the University of Wales.
Following specialist training in Wessex and a radiotherapy fellowship at the Vancouver Cancer Centre, he returned to Wales in 2006 to take up a consultant post in Swansea.
Alongside his clinical work, he chairs the Welsh Health Sciences Committee, which gives independent scientific advice to the Welsh Government, as well as the Wales Cancer Network Clinical Reference Group and two all-Wales advisory groups on advanced radiotherapy.
He is also vice chair of the Council of the Royal College of Radiologists, and a strong advocate for clinical research, currently leading national trials into head and neck and skin cancer.
The course that took him to India is the Cardiff FRCR Course, a non-profit run by consultant oncologists and senior trainees based at the South West Wales Cancer Centre and Velindre Cancer Centre.
Founded in 1986, it prepares oncology trainees for the final exams they must pass to become consultants. It launched in India in 2019 and expanded to Hong Kong four years later, with Dr Rolles on the faculty since 2006.
“It’s hard work but good fun, and we feel we are doing something really useful,” he said.
As for the award itself, he admitted to mixed feelings about the attention.
“Being the centre of attention is slightly embarrassing but receiving the award is very nice. It has come as a massive surprise,” he said.
Dr Rolles is one of more than a dozen people from across Swansea Bay and Carmarthenshire recognised in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours — a list that also included a Swansea University professor appointed OBE for her work on suicide prevention, a hospice nurse in Carmarthen, and a long-serving city councillor honoured shortly before his death.
The recognition comes at a busy time for the Singleton cancer centre, which is undergoing a £14m development to transform how cancer is diagnosed across the region and recently saw its research work boosted by a six-figure investment.
