AN ANTI-SMOKING campaigner from Frinton has died.

Howard Williams opened the first Stop Smoking clinic in the UK, prompted by his years of treating lung cancer and heart patients as a chest consultant.

He later ran the National Society of NonSmokers, now called Quit, and was also a senior member of Action on Smoking and Health.

Mr Williams was born in 1919 in Tonypandy in the Rhondda Valley.

He excelled at science at school, and studied at Cardiff Medical School from 1939 - exempt from war service as a student doctor.

He qualified in 1944 and joined Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, specialising in chest ailments, mostly tuberculosis.

While there, Williams contracted TB himself, forcing him to give up an invitation to play rugby for London Welsh, then a first-class side.

He moved to North London in 1949 to work as a chest physician - and later consultant - at the Whittington Hospital, which included treating lung cancer and patients with chronic emphysema.

In 1962 he and the Islington health education officer, Ken Robertson, began their Stop Smoking Clinic.

He took his antismoking campaign on to radio and TV, particularly as a guest expert on the BBC TV series So You Want to Stop Smoking and in Stop Smoking Special in July 1983.

After his retirement in 1984, Mr Williams continued working with Quit and gave lectures.

He was a member of Probus, a club for retired professional and business people, and was active in his Methodist Church, where he regularly played the organ.

Mr Williams is survived by his second wife, Marjorie, and by the two daughters of his first marriage to Sheila Gordon.