Eric Denman was a senior consultant orthopaedic and accident surgeon at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon from 1965 to 1990. Eric was born to Albert Edward Denman and Gertrude Ann Harrison on 19 August 1927. His father was a civil servant; his mother was the daughter of a master mariner and was herself a Cape Horner (a sailor who has sailed round the treacherous Cape Horn). Eric was educated at Harrow Grammar School and then carried out his National Service in the airborne Royal Signals. He began his medical training at Cambridge University and then at University College Hospital. He went on to posts in Chichester and Leicester, and was a senior registrar at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. He practised for a year in the Sudan from 1964 to 1965, where his wife and children joined him. Later he worked for six months in Swaziland. In 1965 Eric was appointed as a consultant in the new hospital in Swindon. He and his team were on duty when, in 1987, a lone gunman opened fire on the people of nearby Hungerford, killing and injuring several; the victims of the ‘Hungerford Massacre’ were sent to the Princess Margaret Hospital. Eric was also a regular anatomy demonstrator at Oxford University and sat on the *viva* examination panel for the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. After retiring, he moved from Marlborough in Wiltshire to Madjeston, near Gillingham, Dorset, where he studied a variety of subjects with the Open University and gained a degree in astronomy in his late seventies. During his lifetime, his hobbies included marathon running, hill walking, squash and photography. Eric died on 22 January 2009 aged 81 after a short illness. He was survived by his wife Elizabeth Jean née Drummond, whom he married in 1955, and their two children, David and Rosemary.