Sydney George Nardell was born in London on 11 April 1913, where his father, Hyman Nardell, was a tailor, and his mother, Millie Rabinowitz, a housewife. He was educated at King's College and St George's Hospital, where he qualified in 1932. After junior posts he won the Hallett prize in the primary and passed the FRCS in 1938. Many years later, he recalled, in a letter to the Librarian, studying in the College Library where, for sixpence, a tray of tea and biscuits would be served. At the beginning of the war he joined the RAMC and, with his newly wed wife Eileen Zillah, went to India, to the Northern Command. His son David was born in Lucknow the following year. Sydney was then posted to Malaya, where he was promoted to Major and taken prisoner of war by the Japanese in 1942. He spent the next three years in the notorious Changi jail in Singapore. On liberation he returned to India, serving in Lahore and Delhi as a surgical specialist, before returning to England in 1947. He was appointed consultant surgeon to Whipps Cross Hospital in 1948, where he became famous for his teaching, both in the theatre and on the celebrated fellowship course, where innumerable young surgeons from Australasia came to regard his teaching as the passport to the FRCS. He was a true general surgeon, and thought nothing of having an abdomino-perineal excision of the rectum, a prostate and a thyroidectomy on the same list. He retired to Folkestone where he continued to enjoy classical music and travelling, and wrote a book about his experiences as a prisoner of war. He died on 3 June 1998. He was survived by Eileen, their two sons, David and George (neither of them in medicine) and three grandchildren, James, Vicky and Alexander.