David Pryce Goodwin was a consultant in general and vascular surgery at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading and a consultant at Newbury District Hospital. He was born in Larkfield, Kent on 10 May 1936. His father, Geoffrey Pryce Goodwin, had qualified at St Mary’s Hospital, London in the 1930s and was initially a general practitioner before specialising in anaesthetics while an RAMC officer in the Second World War. After the war, he was appointed as a consultant anaesthetist to Maidstone Hospital. He married Marjorie Georgina Perry, a gynae/obstetric nursing sister, in 1935. After David’s birth they had four more boys, including twins, all of whom went on to qualify from Mary’s – Tim (who became a physician), Peter (a dermatologist), Paul (a family doctor) and Phillip (an anaesthetist). Following early education at Holmwood House, Tunbridge Wells and at Tonbridge, Goodwin entered St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in 1954 for his first MB. Although his scholastic achievements had been modest – the careers master at Tonbridge even suggested he should become a farmer – once he started his medical training he blossomed. He gained an honours BSc in anatomy, the anatomy certificate of merit, the Agnes Cope prize in paediatrics, the Cheadle certificate of merit in clinical medicine and a student travel award to Pittsburgh. After qualifying in 1961, house appointments at St Mary’s with W T Irvine and with T A Kemp were followed by an assistant lectureship in anatomy there while working for the primary fellowship. This led to a casualty post at St Thomas’ Hospital (from 1963 to 1964). After a senior house officer training rotation (from 1964 to 1965) in urology at St Peter’s Chertsey (with T W Mimpriss) and general surgery at the Hammersmith (with R H Franklin), he obtained his final FRCS in 1966, continuing his surgical training as a registrar at Edgware General Hospital (from 1966 to 1968). Entering the St Mary’s senior registrar training programme in 1968, Goodwin worked with H H G Eastcott and I R Kenyon (from 1968 to 1970), before spending a year in the USA with a fellowship in surgery at Tulane University, New Orleans, where he studied the immunology of malignant melanoma with E T Krementz. This led to an MS in 1973 and a lifelong interest in this malignancy. He returned to the St Mary’s rotation with appointments at the West Middlesex Hospital with J Schofield and St Mary’s (Harrow Road) with J L Stephen. Goodwin was appointed as a consultant general surgeon with an interest in vascular surgery to the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading in 1974. He was also a consultant surgeon to Newbury District Hospital and an associate teacher at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School (from 1974 to 1990). One of the last generation of general surgeons, he was held in high esteem by his patients and colleagues. With a lifelong interest in malignant melanoma, acquiring a personal series of 560 patients, he published and lectured extensively on skin pigmentation, tumour immunology and general and vascular surgical topics. In 1989, he gave a Moynihan lecture on ‘The management of pigmented lesions in a district general hospital with special reference to melanoma’. Goodwin was on the national committee of the British Association of Surgical Oncology (from 1980 to 1990) and its treasurer (from 1980 to 1988), a member of the editorial board of the *European Journal of Surgical Oncology* (from 1982 to 1989) and president of the Reading Pathological Society (from 1995 to 1996). He was the College surgical tutor at Reading from 1978 to 1984 and again from 1997 to 1999. After retirement in 2000, he played an active role in developing the Berkshire Medical Heritage Centre, of which he was curator and chairman of the trustees for a number of years, acquiring many unusual and rare instruments and artefacts. In 1976 David married Sarah Morphee, a ward sister at St Mary’s. They had no children, but he was a godfather to numerous nephews and nieces. They were devoted to each other and David cared for Sarah at home when she was dying of colonic cancer in 2012. On the biographical form he deposited at the Royal College of Surgeons, he recalled: ‘I was thoroughly trained by excellent teachers, led an interesting professional life and widely travelled to surgical centres in the USA and visited Australia. My own hospital and patients always came first, along with our trainees and students in Reading, and as a result I should like to be remembered as one of the local surgeons who did some good, provided prompt services and did not too much harm. I feel proud to have been of a generation respected and trusted without excessive regulation from above. As a result I hope we achieved something worthwhile.’ At 6ft 5in tall David was an imposing figure on the tennis court and the cricket field. In later years, he enjoyed deep-water sailing on the family yacht *She of Sussex* and was a member of the Royal Southampton Yacht Club. At the age of 10 he had been given a magic set, after which he never looked back, his skills as a magician increasing as the years went by until he was giving professional performances for family, friends and societies, including the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and the Royal College of Surgeons. David was a very skilled surgeon, unique perhaps in the annals of surgery in having a 100% survival rate for sawing people in half – but then he was a member of the Magic Circle. David Goodwin died on 26 November 2020 aged 84 from complications of dementia.