Robert Tiffany went to The Royal Marsden in December 1967 to undertake an oncology nursing course, 27 years later he had transformed the hospital and the specialism of cancer nursing beyond recognition. His great commitment to cancer care spawned from the belief that nurses could dramatically change the care given to patients. It was a vision which drove him relentlessly forward throughout his lifetime. When he was still a junior nurse, he had an ambition to transform despair to hope tor people who had cancer. During the '70s, the mere mention of cancer instilled fear into patients, it was an immediate sentence of death. Robert began a lifelong campaign to overturn those misconceptions. He proved skilled nurses had a crucial role in preventing cancer, in early detection and improving the quality of life for people with cancer.