Born on 1 October 1916 in Ilford, Essex, the third child and second son of Archibald Campbell and Jessica Saunders, née Halsall, Campbell's early education was at Northwood Preparatory School and Berkhamsted School, from which he won an open scholarship (senior demy) to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1934. In his second year he won the Theodore Williams Prize, and proceeded to take a first class honours degree in physiology in 1937. His medical training was at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, which he entered with the Geraldine Harmsworth Scholarship. During his clinical course he won prizes in medicine, dermatology and bacteriology before graduating in 1941. After working as house physician to George Pickering and house surgeon to Thomas Holmes Sellors he joined the RAMC and became regimental MO to the Berkshire Yeomanry. He took part in the Normandy landings, running an aid post in a tank-landing-craft. Characteristically he described the scene as being like a large-scale Cowes regatta. After working as a trainee surgeon in 102 General Hospital at Caen he saw much active service in France and Germany before being posted as a graded surgeon to India in 1944. He served in various hospitals in the East Indies, ending the war in the Celebes as an acting Lieutenant-Colonel. He returned to St Mary's in 1947 and then worked at the Bolingbroke, Great Ormond Street and Connaught Hospitals before becoming senior surgical registrar to R M Handfield-Jones and Arthur Porritt at St Mary's again. Here he was also much influenced by J C Goligher and Arthur Dickson Wright. With the latter especially he was well-matched both in wit and surgical ability. He left St Mary's in 1952 on appointment as consultant surgeon to the Portsmouth Group of Hospitals, fully equipped both as master surgeon and as master of a fund of finely-mimicked Dickson Wright stories. In Portsmouth he was a pioneer of vascular surgery and the surgery of hydrocephalus. He was also so popular as Chairman of the Portsmouth Hospitals Consultants' and Specialists' Association that he was persuaded to stay on in office until finally ill-health compelled him to resign. He was a College tutor, and his reputation as a teacher was so high that there was great competition for his junior posts from as far away as Australia. His shrewdness and wit were features of local clinical meetings, and he was also active in the Wessex Surgeons' Club and the Association of Surgeons. He was a leading light in the Surgical Sixty travelling club in all its professional and social occasions. Bob, as he was universally known, was not only exceptionally gifted intellectually and in the technical dexterity of surgical practice, but also athletically. He represented his University at both Rugby football and cricket and captained the St Mary's XV in 1937. He gained a trial cap for England before the war, and would undoubtedly have played for his country but for the war, during which he played for England in the Services Internationals. He was described, correctly, by the press as the most brilliant and the most handsome member of the team. Later he was invited to play for the Barbarians. While working in Portsmouth, he continued his Rugby career with the Chichester club, of which he became captain and which he raised to a hitherto unknown standard. He continued to play first class Rugby until nearly 40, travelling to Richmond to do so, before confining himself to playing for Chichester, long after lesser men would have hung up their boots. He was also a regular minor county cricketer, and finally an intrepid yachtsman, with whom it was an exhilarating, but exhausting experience to sail. He was a man of great charm, which might at first acquaintance conceal his firm moral and ethical beliefs. His kindness and consideration to his patients and his warm friendship towards those lucky enough to know him could not be concealed. His courage and cheerfulness during his long last illness were exactly what those who knew him expected. He died on 24 April, 1981. In 1942 he married Patricia (Paddy) Wood, whose character complemented Bob's, making them ideal hosts, guests or members of any professional or social gathering. She survives him with four daughters.