One of Britain’s most prominent surgeons, Professor Harold Ellis CBE, FRCS, who has died just after his 100th birthday, qualified as a doctor in the same month the NHS was created. The author of more than 40 books, he was still lecturing at Guy’s Hospital in his nineties.
An inspiring teacher and writer, Ellis was considered one of the most distinguished British surgeons of the past 50 years. He was particularly noted for his definitive Clinical Anatomy, first published in 1960, which has become a classic student textbook. After he retired, he taught clinical anatomy at Cambridge and then at Guy’s campus, King’s College London. He was appointed vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons, England in 1986 and was honoured with a CBE in 1987. His teaching skills launched many trainee surgeons onto successful careers.
Professor Ellis was not one to keep silent when he saw what was happening to the health service. In 2023, during a meeting with health ministers to discuss that winter’s flu, Covid and bed-blocking crises, he challenged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: “What on earth has happened to my beloved NHS? We do some great things in the NHS but now we can’t do the basics. I can’t believe we have patients dying because they’ve waited hours for an ambulance, or have to wait hours outside a hospital because there is no space in A&E.”
Ellis was professor of surgery at the University of London and professor in the Department of Anatomy and Human Sciences at the King’s College London School of Medicine. He was also vice president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and president of the British Association of Surgical Oncology.
He held numerous other influential medical and academic posts throughout his career. His particular interests were abdominal and breast surgery. In 1986, Ellis delivered the Bradshaw Lecture on the subject of breast cancer. Such was his reputation that his name has been associated with major medical prizes. The Professor Harold Ellis Medical Student Prize For Surgery was awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons from 2007, while the International Journal of Surgery has awarded the Harold Ellis Prize in Surgery annually since 2003.
In a tribute, King’s College London wrote: “Professor Ellis worked in the anatomy department at King’s for three decades after retiring from clinical work, only stopping teaching five years ago. He was not only hugely respected internationally in the surgical and anatomy world but was an inspirational teacher and mentor, writing numerous books and articles on surgical anatomy, including the seminal student textbook Clinical Anatomy, first published in 1960 and now in its 14th edition.”
The story of Harold Ellis is one of exceptional achievement. He was born and brought up in Whitechapel in the East End of London, which was then an almost entirely Jewish enclave. His parents had both reached Britain from Russian-occupied Poland, and neither of them had been to school. His father Sam was a barber and his mother Ada a dressmaker. The youngest of four siblings, he lived in a flat above their dressmaking workshop. His father was the president of the former Commercial Road Talmud Torah in Christian Street, a building that is now a mosque. He was educated at St Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar School, walking there over Tower Bridge each morning. But when he was 14 the school was relocated to Torquay. He subsequently won a scholarship to read medicine at Oxford, qualifying in 1948.
He then took up a post at the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where he was inspired to undertake surgery by Arthur Elliot-Smith, senior surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary, for whom he was house surgeon (and later senior registrar). While at Oxford Ellis wrote the first edition of Clinical Anatomy.
He served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps for two years at its neurosurgery unit at Wheatley, which involved regular visits to the fledgling spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville founded by Ludwig Guttmann. He was also responsible for the care of servicemen who returned from the Korean War with severe spinal and cranial injuries.
He later continued his training as a surgical registrar in London, Sheffield and Oxford before taking up a post as senior lecturer in the University of London.
His nephew Richard Ellis writes: “He won the Hallett Prize for the top pass in the FRCS part one and trained in surgery under Norman Tanner, an authority on upper GI surgery. The department attracted visitors from all over the world, and both Tanner and Harold were left-handed. Tanner used to bemuse visitors by telling them: ‘If you want to be a surgeon you have to be able to operate both left and right-handed’ before announcing, ‘Today we will operate left-handed.’ There was never a right-handed day.
“He worked in Sheffield where he wrote a thesis on ‘a hundred consecutive fractures of the tibia in coalminers’. In 1960 he was appointed professor of surgery at Westminster, where his teaching clinics and teaching ward rounds were legendary. He held this position until his retirement from practice in 1989. Harold and the professor of medicine, Malcolm Milne, were chalk and cheese, but they worked brilliantly together and Westminster students of that era had a brilliant training in clinical medicine.
“He retired from surgery aged 63 and took up a new career teaching anatomy at Cambridge and then Guy’s, where he worked until Covid struck. Some of his anatomy tutorials are on YouTube, and his clarity of thought and enthusiasm shines through.
“As recently as two years ago he was proof-reading books and giving editorial advice, including to his nephew Dr Barry Monk.”
Professor Ellis died peacefully in hospital after a three-day admission, cared for by the NHS to whom he had devoted a lifetime. The two doctors treating him had both been taught by him. He is survived by his wife Wendy, née Levene, their son Jonathan Ellis, daughter Suzanne Ferera, six grandchildren and extended family.
GLORIA TESSLER
Professor Harold Ellis CBE: born January 6, 1926. Died March 26, 2026
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