Laughton Leask was born on 15 October 1912, the eldest son of William Laughton Rennie, an architect, and Anne Elizabeth Mabel, née Beaton. He went to preparatory school in Hong Kong, thence to Edinburgh Academy and later to Highgate, before going to St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1930 where he won the junior and senior prizes in anatomy and physiology, and the Treasurer's prize. He held resident appointments at Bart's for eighteen months, and was influenced by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Sir Thomas Dunhill, Davie Levi and R H Boggon. He later worked in the Kingston Hospital group, before joining the RAMC in 1942, where he served in Europe and the Far East, reaching the rank of major, and was remembered by an anaesthetist colleague as having an unusually equable temperament - an oasis of calm especially in situations of high drama and stress. He was appointed consultant surgeon at Kingston Hospital in 1947, and served that institution for 30 years; he then became the first medical director of the Kingston Macmillan continuing care team for patients with advanced malignant disease. In 1937 he married Diana Kathleen, the daughter of the director of Cassell's, the publishing house, for whom Leask acted as medical editor for some years after the war. He was a keen golfer and a talented sculptor in wood and perspex. He died from a cerebral glioma on 3 December 1994, in the care of his 'own' Macmillan team, and was survived by his wife, daughter Carolyn (a nurse), son Malcolm, and granddaughters Emma, Michelle, Claire and Rennie.