Geoffrey William Hinchley (Geoff) was an accident and emergency surgeon at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield, London. Born in Barrow in Furness on 4 December 1959, he was the second of four children. At Barrow Boys Grammar School he excelled both in class and on the athletics field. He studied medicine at Charing Cross Hospital and London University where he was a convivial and popular member of the student union. Keeping up his northern image he was renowned for a repertoire of notorious rugby songs and his ability to down his beer. After house jobs in Jersey and at Charing Cross he moved to Plymouth and worked at Mount Gould and Derriford Hospitals specialising in orthopaedics, thoracic surgery, general surgery and urology. He passed the fellowship of the College in 1988 and spent a while as a ship’s doctor on the cruise liner the *Ocean Pearl*. It was during his time on board that the ship visited China and he was present in Beijing during the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. After a short spell in London he then moved to Nottingham Hospital as an SHO in plastic surgery followed by three years as a registrar in accident and emergency medicine first at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary and then at the Queen’s Medical Centre back in Nottingham. Relocating to Poole, he worked as a senior registrar at the hospital there and at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital. At this time he also studied for a master of laws degree in the legal aspects of medical practice. He completed this in three years and was then able to lecture on the subject to healthcare professionals and give evidence in court as an expert witness. In 1995 he returned to London and took up the post of clinical director of emergency services at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield where he stayed for 11 years, working latterly at Barnet Hospital. He took his role as a mentor to junior trainees very seriously and in 2000 joined the North East Thames Specialty Training Committee. Seven years later he became associate dean at the London Deanery developing training programmes and introduced a new acute care common stem (ACCS) pathway. As London head of school for emergency medicine his innovative approach set the path of his specialty for future years and he abolished historic practices in favour of modern training methods. He took a very active role at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine both in setting standards and in examinations, and also held many significant positions at the British Medical Association. Apart from medicine, politics was central to his life. When he was in Plymouth in his youth he had been an active member of the newly formed SDP but he later became committed to the Labour Party and acted as a fundraiser for the MP Chris Smith during the run up to the 1997 election. A great believer in equality he reformed the fundraising process to include those who could only contribute a small amount. He had a great enthusiasm for the European Union and the result of the 2016 referendum when the UK voted to leave clouded his last days. He had met Neville Walker in London in 1990 and they were to remain together, first as civil partners and later as a married couple until he died. Neville was a restaurant critic and author who occasionally worked overseas for long periods. They had homes in Islington, London and St Gilgen in Austria. Their holiday home in the mountains of the Salzkammergut region provided welcome relief from the pressures of work as did his contemporary art collection. Many well known modern artists became intimately acquainted with the couple. He died from multiple myeloma on 3 July 2016. The disease had been diagnosed at the end of 2013 but he managed to maintain a fairly active life, including a visit to his native Cumbria, until just before the end. He was survived by Neville and by his niece and nephew Adam and Megan to whom he was a devoted uncle.