May I, as a retired children’s physician married to a GP and the nephew and grandnephew of family doctors intrude on your pages, first to applaud Dr Iona Heath’s appreciation of my friend Dr John Horder and second to express my whole agreement with what your editorial1 has to say about the role of GPs in the care of children. I may in this context extend Winnicott’s aphorism that ‘there is no such thing as a baby — rather a nursing couple’ — to older children, whose existence depends on being part of …