Martin Birnstingl was a consultant vascular surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and was widely respected for his expertise and for his clear and concise teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate students. He was also a consultant surgeon to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and served in an honorary capacity at St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy. He was born on 17 June 1924, the eldest of four children: his father, Charles Avigdor Birnstingl, was a master printer and was founder of the hand-printing press 'Favil' in the 1920s. His mother Ursula née Carr went to University College to study general science and then the Royal College of Music, where she played the piano. She also made illustrations for the publications produced by her husband. Her father, Herbert Wilson Carr, was a professor of philosophy, teaching first at King's College London and then in the USA at the University of Southern California, and her mother, Geraldine Carr, was a noted enamellist who trained at the Slade School of Art. Both of Martin's parents were Fabian socialists who encouraged their offspring to develop broad cultural interests. Clearly the musical, artistic and literary genes were quite dominant. When Martin was eight, the family moved to a farm in Wiltshire, and he started a lifelong interest in ornithology. Shortly thereafter he was sent to the progressive school, Bedales, where he was influenced by some excellent teachers and there was an emphasis on the arts. This was ideal for someone in whom music was to play such an important part throughout his life. Although there were age gaps in the family of three boys and a girl, the elder two, Martin and David, shared an old Harley Davison motorbike and when at home the two older brothers towed young Roger on a wooden sledge! Their only sister, Jessica, appeared in 1939 to complete the family. From school he went to St Bartholomew's Hospital for his medical training and had an exceptionally good academic undergraduate career. He gained many prizes including the treasurer's, the Foster prize, a junior scholarship and the Brackenbury prize in surgery. With the latter, it was inevitable that he would start his career on the professorial surgical unit under Sir James Paterson Ross. His early training was undertaken at the time when the more conservative approaches to vascular problems were the vogue, such as sympathectomy. He did National Service as a captain in the RAMC, serving in East Africa and Mauritius, where he kept a pet parrot. When demobilised he had a spell as a demonstrator in pathology and during this appointment passed the primary and final FRCS examinations. Martin soon developed an interest in the emerging discipline of reconstructive vascular surgery, which had been pioneered in America in 1948. In 1952 he and a visiting American fellow at Bart's, Jack Connolly, toured the vascular centres in Europe, their education in the latest techniques being greatly facilitated by Martin's fluency in many languages. It opened many doors in France with surgeons such as Leriche, Dubust, Kulin and Oudot. With the FRCS under his belt, he went as a surgical registrar to Norwich and benefited from the wide range of clinical problems seen in the provinces. He worked with Charles Noon, a Bart's man of the 'old school', and Norman Townsley, an Ulsterman, who quizzed his registrars on clinical anatomy, some aspects of radiotherapy and introduced them to emergency neurosurgery, as well as paediatric problems. Being on call at the main Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on alternate nights and the remaining nights at the Jenny Lind Hospital for Children, gave Martin a great experience in the 'generality of surgery'. He continued his training at Bart's as a chief assistant to Sir James Paterson Ross on the surgical professorial unit, where he was fortunate to work with Gerard Taylor, who had gained experience of large vessel replacement in San Francisco with Emile Holman and Frank Gerbode. 'Gerry' Taylor replaced Sir James as professor of surgery and was a superb technician and an excellent teacher who trained generations of surgeons. Towards the end of his period as a senior registrar, Martin went as a Fulbright scholar to the USA for a year. He worked at Stanford University, San Francisco, California with Frank Gerbode. It was during this year that he and American surgeon, John Erskine, walked the John Muir trail in the High Sierras of California: this proved to be one of Martin's favourite treks. Other outside activities starting in his early adult years were sailing and canoeing. On his return to the UK, Martin Birnstingl was made assistant director of the professorial surgical unit and added to the vascular expertise already present. His interest in replacement vascular surgery was maintained and put him in the forefront of advances in this field. He edited and published *Peripheral vascular surgery* (London, Heinemann Medical, 1973), a concise textbook for the surgeon and general medical practitioner containing up-to-date reviews of the diseases affecting the abdominal aorta and peripheral arteries, with an account of the latest techniques for treating them. In 1986 he was elected president of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland. His definitive appointment was as one of two consultants on the 'light blue' surgical firm at Bart's, where he proved an admirable foil to Sir Edward Tuckwell, serjeant- surgeon to The Queen. The firm was very popular with students and trainees alike, but at times, Martin became very frustrated that the 'junior' of the two consultants had so few beds for his patients. That the hospital had no private beds suited Martin's commitment to the NHS, although he did have a modest private practice to exercise his skills. At times this source of income was barely enough to cover the cost of shared rooms in Harley Street. He was certainly unhappy at the relentless privatisation of the NHS and was never fond of committee work. He became somewhat disenchanted at the way his alma mater was approaching its future. For over 40 years his much loved partner was Renate Prince, an architect. They lived in London in a large Victorian house with a garden, trees and a resident fox. Close to Hampstead Heath, it was ideal for Martin's bird-watching, and as they were both keenly interested in the arts and travel, they were able to pursue their love of music, literature, architecture and, for many years, engaged in skiing, which Martin had started in his twenties. Martin rarely missed an alpine season and in 1960, with his brother Roger, he completed the 'haute route' from Chamonix to Saas Fee, taking in many summits en route, including Monte Rose and the Allalinhorn. Having started to play the flute in childhood, with Renate's encouragement, Martin started to learn the harpsichord in middle age. When going to Germany to collect a new instrument he had ordered, he was taken to a house and not the maker's workshop: 'Wir sind bereit, herr professor'. It took some time for Martin to convince the sizeable gathering that he has a doctor of medicine, and not of music! As a fine flautist he played in many London amateur orchestras, even performing the Bach B minor suite in public. An abiding interest in jazz music started in the year he spent in the USA during his surgical training. Although widely read in the classical literature, and able to read in many European languages, *Moby Dick* was the book he most frequently re-read. Both Martin and Renate were committed to progressive politics, and shared the same humanitarian beliefs and concerns. Martin had a principled, moral approach to the world. When involved in an issue, he used his medical knowledge and expertise to challenge the official line. In the 1960s, as an opponent of the war in Vietnam, he travelled to Hanoi for the Stockholm Tribunal (initiated by Bertrand Russell) to witness the destruction of the medical infrastructure during the American bombing of North Vietnam. He saw at first hand the damage to hospitals, clinics and the loss of important medical supplies and equipment: he was appalled to see that weapons used by the United States military had maimed or killed so many civilians. In 1982 he went to Beirut with two friends, Pam Zinkin, a paediatrician, and Steven Rose to study health conditions in the aftermath of the massacre by fellow Arabs of Palestinian refugees in camps at Sabra and Chatilla. The Israelis had stood by and watched, and Martin's opposition to Israel's stance was longstanding. He was involved in several campaigns including the academic and economic boycott. Having visited the camps in southern Lebanon they published a report on the health of the refugees. He went to several meetings of Physicians for Human Rights of Israel, and Martin campaigned against the infringements of Palestinian human rights. He was a co-signatory of a letter in the *Lancet* (2007 Dec 22;370[9605]:2102) reporting allegations that Israeli doctors colluded in the torture of prisoners in Gaza. The letter was critical of the Israeli Medical Association for not speaking out on the issue, and he was one of 725 physicians who called on the UN to investigate the claims. On the UK scene he was one of those who challenged Lord Hutton's classification of documents about the death of the chemical weapons expert, David Kelly, and took issue with the conclusion that the death was a suicide. The argument they advanced was that it was 'highly improbable' that the primary cause of death was haemorrhage from a single ulnar artery as stated in the Hutton report. He gave Norman Baker MP some useful information for the book he wrote on this controversial topic. Both Martin and Renate were disenchanted with Prime Minister Blair's tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like so many others in the UK, they feared the unnecessary loss of life and the inevitable difficulty in negotiating a peace settlement in cultures totally different from those in the West. Martin Birnstingl suffered a severe stroke when in Spain with Renate at the end of September 2010, and spent five cruel months paralysed and unable to speak, first in hospital and then in Highgate Nursing Home, where he died on 21 January 2011 at the age of 86. Renate Prince survives him as do his siblings, Roger, a well-known bassoonist and professor at the Royal College of Music and other institutions, and Jessica Smart, who was a lawyer's assistant.