Paul Cassell was a consultant general surgeon at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough. He was appointed in 1972 and retired in 1998; his time there can be seen in retrospect as coinciding with the heyday of the district general hospital and certainly of Wexham Park Hospital. Paul was born in south London on 12 February 1936 in Croydon to Walter Cassell and Gladys Cassell née Sperring as the only son with a younger sister. The only medical connection in the family was a paternal aunt who was one of the early cohort of pioneering female graduates of the Royal Free Hospital Medical School, London. He was proud of his origins and, in his self-penned summary of his life for the Lives of Fellows, he described his father as a ‘manufacturer’s agent’. He made his own way in the world on merit. He attended the local state primary school in Kensington Avenue in Thornton Heath and demonstrated his abilities by passing the 11 plus and gaining a place at Dulwich College under a special scholarship to promote children of ability. He did well at his A levels and gained a place at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, which he entered in 1955. He won the Treasurer’s prize in anatomy and demonstrated the surgical direction he wished to follow by winning the Brackenbury prize in surgery. He graduated in 1960 and, after house jobs at Bart’s, he left to take up a post as a senior house officer at the Birmingham Accident Hospital, which at the time was the leading accident and emergency unit in the country. He then returned to London as a lecturer in anatomy at King’s College Hospital, where he studied for and passed the primary FRCS. His registrar posts followed at Bart’s, the Westminster and Reading. He passed the FRCS in 1966 and was appointed to a senior registrar post at Bart’s. During his surgical training, he was influenced by the Bart’s surgeons Alan Hunt, John Beattie, James Robinson and Ian Todd. It was Todd (later president of the Royal College of Surgeons) who inspired him to develop an interest in coloproctology and he attended Todd’s clinics at St Mark’s Hospital when it was in the City Road, London. He wrote papers with his chiefs on perforated peptic ulcers, pericardiotomy and ischiorectal abscess. Although he was a ‘general surgeon’ in the fullest sense he became increasingly interested in coloproctology as a specialty. He was an active member of the section of coloproctology of the Royal Society of Medicine and served on its council and as its treasurer. The section undertook an annual overseas meeting, which he and his wife Janet frequently supported. At one such meeting one of the members made a joke presentation of a suppository wrapped in silver paper, which was awarded to the best new attendee. Paul took this to a new level and commissioned a local jeweller to create a real silver emblem in the shape of a suppository mounted on a wooden plinth. This ‘silver suppository’ continues to be awarded at the annual overseas meeting of the section! He was a sensitive and encouraging mentor to his trainees. He taught them good sound surgical practices learned from his own mentors. He encouraged original thought and academic advancement. He became associated with Kurt Hellmann while at the Westminster Hospital and, when Hellmann developed the antimitotic drug ICRF 159 (later razoxane) he encouraged its use at Wexham Park Hospital. A randomised trial of its use as an adjuvant in colorectal cancer was set up under his supervision and this attracted international interest, which was a significant achievement from a district general hospital. Despite having a very busy clinical life he found time to serve the wider community as a magistrate. He sat on the Slough bench from 1974 for 33 years. He met his wife Janet (née Sheldon), who was a physiotherapist, while working at the Birmingham Accident Hospital and they married in 1963. He was a family man and he and Janet had two sons and a daughter, who produced a total of 10 grandchildren, of whom Paul was inordinately proud. In his personal life, he was a committed Christian and formed an attachment to Herefordshire after leading a team from Bart’s when he was a medical student to take services in small rural churches. This attachment to Hereford continued throughout his life and he bought a property and land there, to which he and the family would go to enjoy their personal time together. His Christian principles guided his life and he gave his time to evangelical Christian circles, including youth clubs and preaching. He always sought friendship rather than enmity, cooperation rather than confrontation. He was the ideal colleague, friend and person. He died at the age of 82 was survived by all his close family, including his wife Janet, their three children, one of whom is a plastic surgeon, seven grandsons and three granddaughters.