Mervyn Dunning was a consultant general surgeon in Shrewsbury. He was educated at Hampton Grammar School, London. He initially trained as a dentist at the Royal Dental Hospital, qualifying in 1941. He held junior posts, as a house surgeon and then senior house surgeon in maxillofacial surgery. He then took up a commission in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The allied invasion of Europe was looming, and when D-Day occurred Mervyn was stationed at the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth charged with dealing with war injuries from the front line. This experience convinced him that he should gain a medical qualification so, in 1946, after serving as a surgeon lieutenant in a combined services hospital in Trincomalee (in what was then Ceylon), he went to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1950 and served as house surgeon to Rupert Vaughan Hudson, the senior surgeon at Middlesex. Mervyn subsequently held a surgical appointment at the Royal Naval Hospital in Malta. He returned to Middlesex Hospital in 1952 as a demonstrator in anatomy and then proceeded to hold appointments at senior house officer and registrar level. He obtained his FRCS in 1957. After a number of senior registrar appointments in the north of England, he was appointed in 1963 as a consultant general surgeon to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Mervyn was a courteous and attentive surgeon well-liked by his patients. He was widely read, fond of classical music, and an accomplished artist. He and his wife Elizabeth lived in a beautiful town house dating from the 1660s, where they were welcoming and generous hosts. Towards the end of his life he was in poor health and eventually needed bilateral leg amputations. He died in August 2010 aged 93, and was survived by his wife and his daughter Penny from his first marriage.