Born at Oldham 7 October 1903, son of Llewellyn Buckley, yarn broker, and Sarah Henthorne his wife, he was educated at King Edward VII School, Lytham St Anne's, at St John's College, Cambridge and at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was house surgeon to Sir Geoffrey Keynes and Harold Wilson at Bart's and then went into general practice at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, where he lived at Westbourne House, Newcastle Street, and served on the staff of the Victoria Hospital. He gave up general practice in 1944 when he was appointed to the surgical staff of Stoke Mandeville Hospital under Professor T Pomfret Kilner, and in 1945 joined George Mason's thoracic surgical unit at Shotley Bridge. He was appointed in 1946 assistant thoracic surgeon to the City Hospital, Nottingham and became consultant in charge of the unit in 1948. This thoracic unit had been started in 1939 by Laurence O'Shaugnessy FRCS, who was killed early in the war of 1939-45. Buckley developed it into a regional centre of thoracic and cardiac surgery. He was also associate surgeon to the Nottingham General Hospital and held other appointments at Grimsby, Worksop, and Lincoln, and at Newstead and Ransom sanatoria. He travelled in Europe and America to study the development of surgery of the heart. Buckley married on 6 June 1931 Nancy Stott of Lytham-St Anne's. He suffered a heart attack in 1955, and died suddenly from a second attack, while holding an out-patient clinic, on 14 November 1956 aged 53. He was survived by his mother, his wife, and their son. He was a skilled operator and a man of wise judgment, kindly and unassuming.