Keith Roberts was a consultant cardiothoracic paediatric surgeon in Birmingham. He was born on 15 February 1923 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the only child of the Reverend Meredith Danford Roberts, a Congregational minister, and his wife, Caroline Lettie Roberts née Stuart, a teacher born in South Africa. Roberts gained scholarships to King Edward VI Grammar School, Nuneaton, and then to Birmingham University Medical School. In 1942 he gained the Peter Thompson anatomy prize, and in 1946 the senior surgical and midwifery prizes. He held house surgeon appointments at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. He remained in the city for his surgical training, with posts at St Chad's and Dudley Road hospitals, and the Children's Hospital. In 1953 he was appointed as a thoracic surgical registrar (and, in 1954, as a senior thoracic surgical registrar) for United Birmingham Hospitals and Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. In April 1959 he became a consultant thoracic surgeon to the United Birmingham Hospitals at the Children's Hospital, and to the regional thoracic unit at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. He was appointed as a senior clinical lecturer in surgery at the University of Birmingham in the following year. In 1969 he was made a consultant cardiothoracic paediatric surgeon at the Children's Hospital, the first appointment at the hospital of a purely paediatric surgeon. He and his colleague Leon Abrams established the Birmingham Children's Hospital as the West Midlands centre for paediatric cardiac surgery. After cardiac surgery had developed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the late 1950s, it became evident that children should be treated at the Children's Hospital. In the early 1960s Keith Roberts initiated the development of a special operating theatre and the first two intensive care beds for children. He had a strong interest in intensive care, and became a founder member of the Intensive Care Society. He continued to campaign for more intensive care beds at the Children's Hospital, but a lack of funds delayed the enlargement of the unit until the mid-1970s. Initially his forte was in neonatal thoracic surgery. He undertook outstanding pioneering surgery on newborn infants with tracheoesophageal fistula. He successfully separated conjoined twins and was frequently consulted by other surgeons. He later gained considerable cardiac surgical expertise, in particular concerning coarctation of the aorta and developments in cardiopulmonary bypass. He was also one of the first to use bypass in the intensive care unit on a relatively long-term basis, for treating acute respiratory difficulty. Using bypass, he also helped colleagues carrying out complicated hepatic surgery. He published many papers and chapters in textbooks, including contributions to Rob and Smith's *Clinical surgery* and *Operative surgery*. He co-wrote *Paediatric intensive care* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1971) with Jennifer M Edwards. At the Children's Hospital, he was on call on a one-in-two basis and spent many long nights caring for his postoperative patients - and then operating again the following day. He was always prepared to take on extra work and helpfully supported all his colleagues. He was a most compassionate, kind man and this was appreciated by his colleagues, patients and their families. In 1946 he married Margaret Evelyn née Holloway, a nurse. They had three children: Meryl Elizabeth, Diane Marguerite and Christopher Ian Danford. Keith Roberts died on 17 June 2012, aged 89.