Victor Bonney was one of the great masters of gynaecological surgery. He looked on himself as a surgeon who had cultivated one specialty, and could not agree that gynaecologists should be considered a third estate in the medical profession. He was not only a brilliant technical operator but a man of great intellectual power, fully equipped in knowledge of anatomy, pathology, and general surgery, and of tireless energy, whose vast practice somehow left time for an enormous output of writing for the professional journals. He made time also for administrative and teaching work, never seemed to be in a hurry, cultivated a leisurely and affable manner, and was able to read a great deal of good literature, to paint and exhibit at medical art exhibitions, to be an expert dry-fly fisherman, and to take part in the social enjoyment of the London season. William Francis Victor Bonney - he never used his first two Christian names - was born 17 December 1872 at Chelsea, eldest of the three sons of William Augustus Bonney MD, who had an excellent family practice in that district of west London. His mother was Anna Maria Alice Polixene, only daughter of Dr Victor Poulain, who also practised in Chelsea. In his unpublished "Bonney Memoirs" Victor Bonney pointed to the contrast between the simple, old-fashioned professional family in which he grew up, much like that of a general practitioner in a country town, and the busy, extravagant, moneyed world of Mayfair into which ambition and ability took him. He was educated at a private school and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, but transferred to the Middlesex, intending to become a physician. The shrewd judgment of Sir John Bland-Sutton invited him to the Chelsea Hospital for Women, where he laid the foundations of his success as a gynaecological surgeon. He obtained honours at the London MB BS examination in 1896, and proceeded to the MD 1898, the FRCS 1899, and the MRCP 1900. Four years later he took first-class honours in anatomy at London University for the BSc degree, although by that time in busy practice. He had held residential posts at Queen Charlotte's as well as at the Middlesex and Chelsea hospitals; at the latter he became assistant physician in 1901. In 1905 he became obstetric registrar and tutor at the Middlesex. He was elected assistant gynaecological surgeon in 1908, a post which he held till 1930, when he succeeded his old friend Sir Comyns Berkeley FRCS as gynaecological surgeon. The very successful *Textbook of Operative Gynaecology* which they wrote together did much to raise British prestige in this specialty, and to set the highest standards for their successors. It is probable, though he never claimed it, that it was Bonney's contribution which put the book in a class of its own. Most of it was written at night, and Bonney attended a drawing school to learn to make his own illustrations. First published in 1911, it reached a sixth edition, which contains 611 drawings by Bonney, in 1952. During the war of 1914-18 Bonney served as surgeon to the military branch of the Middlesex Hospital at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and also worked at the County of London and Royal Masonic Hospitals. At this time he made known (*Brit med J* 15 May 1915) his "violet green antiseptic", popularly called "Bonney's blue". At the Royal College of Surgeons he was a Hunterian Professor in 1908, 1930, and 1931, Bradshaw Lecturer in 1934, and Hunterian Orator in 1943. He was the only gynaecological specialist ever elected to the Council, and served with distinction from 1926 to 1946, being a Vice-President 1936-38. He was the first Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Surgeons, the American Gynaecological Society, and of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He was a Vice-President of the Kipling Society. His life-long friend Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor wrote of his surgery: "As an operator he was supreme. Careful and gentle where conservatism was possible, he was without a doubt the most skilful, experienced, and intrepid of all exponents throughout the world of the Wertheim operation for cancer of the womb." For Bonney's own views on this operation see his paper: *Lancet* 1949, 1, 637. Bonney married in 1905 Annie, daughter of Dr James Appleyard JP, of Longford, Tasmania. He died in the Middlesex Hospital on 4 July 1953, aged 81, survived by his wife. They had lived at 15 Devonshire Place, but in the last twelve years of his life they spent most of their time at Seabournes, Much Fawley, Hereford, the house they had built above the Wye, though Bonney kept in touch with London. Mrs Bonney died in London on 11 August 1963, aged 94. She had given the College in 1956 the portrait of Bonney painted by Oswald Birley. Bonney bequeathed to the College three bound volumes of his published papers, with a survey of his own work. He wrote six books and more than two hundred articles. Besides the *Textbook* already mentioned, his most important work was: *The Technical Minutiae of extended Myomectomy and Ovarian Cystectomy* (London, Cassell 1946; 282 pages and 242 line drawings by the author).