Harold Ellis: doyen of surgery and clinical anatomy, who loved sharing anecdotes from the operating theatre

When Harold Ellis became a doctor, he was afraid of catching polio. By the time he retired, HIV/AIDS was the big fear. Ellis qualified in July 1948, the same month the NHS was born. “I went away for a fortnight’s holiday, came back and it was now the National Health Service,” he said. These were good times. “We had all our meals, our laundry, and at the Radcliffe [in Oxford], because of some benefaction, we had free beer in the evenings,” he told the BBC.