Hugh Brown was a consultant plastic surgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, and a former president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He was born on 25 February 1927 in Newcastle upon Tyne. His father, Charles Frank Brown, was a bank manager; his mother was Edith Temple Brown née Smithson. He was educated at St Peter’s School, York, and then studied medicine at Durham University, where he was president of the university boat club. He had deferred his National Service to study at Durham, so after qualifying and after basic training at Aldershot, he was appointed as a medical officer to the King’s African Rifles and posted to Lusaka and later Malaya. On his return to the UK, he was a registrar at Newcastle General Hospital and then became an anatomy demonstrator. He gained his FRCS in 1958. In 1965 he spent a year at New York University, where he developed his interest in hand surgery under John Converse and spent time with Frederic Mohs in Wisconsin, learning the Mohs technique for treating suspected skin cancer, where thin layers of cancer-containing skin are removed and examined, until only cancer free tissue remains: Brown was one of the first to introduce the Mohs technique to the UK. In 1968 Brown was appointed as a consultant in Newcastle and as a senior lecturer in plastic surgery at the University of Newcastle. He retired in 1992. At the Royal Victoria Infirmary, he initially carried out all types of plastic surgery, but later focused on hand surgery. He was president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand in 1985, of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1988 and the British Association of Clinical Anatomists in 1989. He served in the Territorial Army for many years, ending his career as colonel of the First Northern General Hospital. He was later an honorary colonel of 201 Field Hospital, an Army reserve hospital based in Newcastle. He was appointed as an honorary surgeon to the Queen in 1972. He was deputy lieutenant of Tyne and Wear (from 1986) and, in 1992, was made high sheriff. In 1981 he married Ann Mary Crump, who became a GP. They had three children – Catherine, Andrew and Elizabeth. Brown died on 21 May 2022 at the age of 95 and was survived by his widow and their son and daughter; another daughter predeceased him in 2011.