Michael Stanton King was a chief surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi. Born in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, where his father, Leslie King, was a vicar who went on to play a role in the British and Foreign Bible Society, Michael encountered many missionary doctors visiting the family home. His mother was Rosina King née Stanton, a housewife. He had always wanted to be a surgeon and was drawn to work overseas. As a child he was an avid collector of natural history and started on dissection at a young age. In more recent decades, a memorable time for his granddaughters during their school holidays was going to the butcher, buying a cow’s heart and being taken through the anatomy on the kitchen table. After an early childhood during the Second World War spent in Annerley, he went to Dulwich College Preparatory School and secured a scholarship to attend Hereford Cathedral School, going on to achieve an exhibition to St John’s College, Cambridge to study medicine. Before he went up to Cambridge, he carried out his National Service in Hong Kong, where he was involved in patrols on the Chinese mainland. After Cambridge, he went on to Guy’s Hospital Medical School for his clinical studies and qualified in 1962. He held house posts at the Whittington Hospital and in Lewisham and was a registrar at Shrewsbury. He and his wife, Elspeth (née Calder), who he met at Cambridge, then embarked on a posting to Malaysia. With two small daughters, they worked at University Hospital, Kuala Lumpur, which involved them lecturing and training medical students as well as clinical work, including clinical visits to remote hospitals in the Malaysian jungle, including to Gombak, which served the Sakai people, who hunted with blowpipes. Following a three-month overland journey from Malaysia to the UK, with his wife Elspeth and two daughters, and then locums in Orpington, Poole and Worthing, the family went to Swaziland, where he was at Mbabane Hospital for three years. During the annual Reed Dance ceremony, which involved hundreds of young women dancing for King Sobhuza so that he could choose his next wives, the hospital was inundated with a lorry load of injured young women which had overturned on the road. It was an advert in the *British Medical Journal* for a surgeon in Malawi which led to Michael and Elspeth spending three decades in this beautiful, but very poor country. They chose to drive from the UK to Saudi Arabia in their Volkswagen Kombi van, before flying on Sudan Airways to arrive at Blantyre. Michael took care to describe himself as a general surgeon, which he increasingly viewed as an all too rare a profession in an era of micro-specialties. Working alongside and training clinical assistants in Malawi, he was highly respected for both his surgery and teaching skills in the operating theatres. He was described by peers as ‘a most skilled surgeon, and quick’ (Paul Fenton) and ‘an exceptional man’ (John Gillies). Michael deeply respected the clinical assistants who worked with him for long hours, on poor pay. He was also careful to manage concurrent, busy theatre lists so that clinical staff could make their long journeys home at the end of the day. In Malawi’s poorly resourced hospitals, where equipment and drugs were scarce, Michael and his colleagues performed a wide range of surgery, from obstetrics to trauma (hippo and crocodile bites, gunshot wounds, car accidents) to complex abdominal and head cases. Many are described in his book *Surgery in Malawi 1976-2008*. He also wrote up a remarkable case of an eight-year-old boy with an airgun bullet lodged in his heart (‘Bullet in heart removed from knee’ *BMJ* 2015 350 2234). The job and life in Malawi involved considerable personal risks – including navigating the early days of HIV/AIDS when little was known about the transmission and risks from exposure to infected blood, leading one of his daughters to suggest chainmail surgical gloves for protection. With fond childhood memories of his own paternal grandfather, Ernest King, who had talipes, Michael was a trustee of Malawi Against Polio, designing a three-wheel wheelchair to navigate Malawi’s narrow and winding paths. After nearly 20 years of employment by the British Official Development Assistance in Malawi as one of two chief surgeons, Michael retired in 1994 and in 2006 was made a life fellow of the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa. However, he and Elspeth wanted to continue their service to poor people in Malawi, so they moved to live in Nkhata Bay in the north of the country. There he designed a well-ventilated, simple one roomed house made with locally cast bricks, with a beautiful view overlooking Lake Malawi, where he frequently ventured out in the kayak he had made. Michael would often be called by local colleagues to attend emergencies including a brave lady whose foot had been taken by a crocodile on the Mozambique side of the lake, some 100 kilometres away. During the incident she had defended herself by hitting the crocodile with a log. Following a journey by boat across the lake from Mozambique to Nkhata Bay (the nearest hospital) she was operated on, made a full recovery and returned to her village. Michael made regular visits to the government and mission hospitals in northern Malawi, being driven by Elspeth, and addressing all new patients as ‘dear’, while Elspeth spoke to nurses, took an interest in AIDS and assessed the needs of the hospital. They secured hospital equipment and financial support from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Cambridge Rotary Club as well as visits from many surgeons, including Feet First Worldwide, which still make use of the house. He was a widely recognised figure in Nkhata Bay; even the illiterate local witchdoctor came round to referring his patients on to ‘Dr King’. Michael was awarded an OBE for services to surgery in 1997. He was a gifted polymath who was always making something – showing great skill with wood (making violins, a spinet, several canoes, beautiful furniture including inlaid wood), wood and stone sculptures, intricately carved jewellery, creating paintings, very fine ink and pencil drawings and writing poems throughout his life. Michael was endlessly curious, interested and fiercely intelligent. He had a rich intellectual and family life, and was adored by his great grandsons, who described him as the most interesting person to be with, providing them with moving models of hands that he had made or showing them interesting things in the garden. His work was driven by service to the poorest; he had no time for pomposity nor profligate lifestyles. He died on 13 September 2024 at the age of 88.