Cedric Longland was born at Bolobo in the Belgian Congo on 30 September 1914. His father, Frank Longland, was a civil engineer in East Africa and later Provincial Commissioner for Tanganyika Territory. Daisy Longland, Cedric's mother, was one of the earliest women to qualify in medicine at Edinburgh in 1910, and under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society she ran a mission hospital in Kinshasa, Belgian Congo, while her husband Frank ran the mission steamer *The Endeavour* 500 miles up the Congo river. At that time, as a civil engineer, he also built bridges, roads and churches and it was later that he moved eastwards to Tanganyika (now Tanzania), where he became Provincial Commissioner. Cedric spent his early years in Africa and received all his education from his mother until the age of twelve. He was then sent home as a boarder in 1926 to Monkton Combe School, where he played cricket and rugby football and rowed for his school at Henley Regatta. In 1932 he went to St Bartholomew's Medical School, where he won the Walsham prize for pathology and graduated in 1937 with honours in medicine. Influential teachers at that time included Sir Girling Ball and Professor Paterson Ross. After qualifying, he was appointed house surgeon to Sir Girling Ball, followed by an appointment as house surgeon to the ear, nose and throat department and a demonstratorship of pathology, all at St Bartholomew's Hospital, between 1937 and 1940. In 1940 he became resident surgical officer at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, a post he held for two years, before joining the First Airborne Division, with which he served in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, before being dropped at Arnhem in 1944. There, he treated casualties at St Elizabeth Hospital until it was overrun and he was captured, subsequently escaping from a prisoner of war camp at Appeldoorn, following which he linked up with the Dutch underground, but was later recaptured. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Holland. Following his release he served as SMO to the military hospital in Bermuda until 1946. He then returned to St Bartholomew's Hospital and was first assistant in the surgical professorial unit between 1947 and 1950, and in 1949 was a member of the surgical team that carried out a lumbar sympathectomy on King George VI, for which he was awarded the MVO in May 1949 (later the LVO). Between 1951 and 1954 he was assistant on the surgical professorial unit at University College Hospital with Professor Pilcher, being appointed to the staff of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary as consultant surgeon in 1954, a post he held until retirement in 1977. He was an examiner in surgery for the University of Glasgow in 1960, and in 1966 he spent a year in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of a team from Glasgow helping to set up a medical school there. His appointment to Glasgow Royal Infirmary as surgeon in charge of wards initially caused consternation because he was unknown, but he identified himself totally with the Infirmary and was appointed first Chairman of the Surgical Division and Chairman of the West of Scotland Surgical Association. His interests were surgery of the biliary tract and pancreas and the prevention of wound infection. He also pioneered mechanical suture methods in gastrointestinal anastomoses and the use of the choledochoscope. Cedric enjoyed rowing and sailing, the latter on Loch Lomond and as a crew member in the Bermuda to New York yacht race. He skied in Austria and Scotland, where he also fished, and in retirement studied music at Glasgow University as an extra-mural student, bought a clavichord and composed 'Elizabethan' music. In 1982 he moved to Grittleton in the Cotswolds, where he was church warden and secretary of the parish council, and where he redesigned his garden, which included work in stone walling. His publications reflected his interest in general and vascular surgery, his war experience and a variety of wider and historical subjects. He married Helen Cripps, an artist and teacher, in 1965 and they had three daughters, Rosemary, Susan and Annette. He died on 14 January 1991, survived by his wife, daughters and nine grandchildren.