Sir William Slack, known as Willie to his friends and colleagues (but always William to his wife), was a much-admired surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital who served as a surgeon to the Queen for 15 years between 1975 and 1990. He was born on 22 February 1925 to Cecil Moorhouse Slack, who was awarded a Military Cross and bar in the First World War, and Dora Slack née Willatt in North Ferriby near Hull and schooled at Bramcote School, Scarborough and Winchester College. He was a natural sportsman from a very early age, playing croquet as soon as he could walk (his father was passionate about the game) and winning many athletics cups at school. His greatest love was association football; he played for Winchester, won a blue at Oxford and regularly played for Corinthian Casuals FC. At his funeral, the Cup Final hymn ‘Abide with me’ was sung in recognition of his lifelong love of ‘the beautiful game’. In 1944, he proceeded to New College, Oxford and thence to the Middlesex Hospital for clinical studies. He qualified in 1950. After house jobs, he continued much of his surgical training at the Middlesex, where he was particularly influenced by Leslie le Quesne, although in 1953 he spent a year at St Bartholomew’s, where he worked for Edward Tuckwell, also an influence. The final FRCS was passed in 1955. While a senior registrar at the Middlesex, in 1959 he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he pursued research into the distribution of colonic blood vessels and muscle layers in diverticular disease, work which he had started at St Mark’s Hospital and for which he was awarded an MCh in 1961. Willie was appointed as a consultant surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital in 1962 and simultaneously as a senior lecturer to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, holding both appointments until his retirement in 1991. He was later appointed to the consultant staff of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth (from 1970 to 1988) and of the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers (from 1975 to 1991). While practising the full range of general surgery, he took a special interest in colorectal surgery and many of his publications relate to this discipline. Amongst other topics, he authored papers relating to diverticular disease, large bowel cancer, radiation injury of the bowel, inflammatory bowel disease and sexual function after rectal surgery, all in peer-reviewed journals or textbooks. In 1980, he was president of the section of coloproctology at the Royal Society of Medicine. He took a great interest in student teaching and in 1966 was appointed as undergraduate sub dean at the medical school. Noted for his tact and diplomatic skills, it was no surprise that in 1983 he was appointed dean of the school when a merger with University College Hospital Medical School was in the air. This merger came about in 1987, as part of the reorganisation of medical teaching in London and a consequent reduction in the number of medical schools, and he then had the difficult task of keeping the peace between the various heads of department as they vied with each other for position. Inevitably, under Willie’s leadership, a very strong academic union emerged. In 1974, an unexpected letter arrived informing him that he had been appointed to the post of surgeon to the Queen. He did not know that he had been an applicant, but later realised that a discreet vetting process had been undertaken and that the opinion of Edward Tuckwell, a former chief and himself in Her Majesty’s service, had been important. He was later promoted to the post of serjeant surgeon to the Queen and in 1990 was made KCVO at a private ceremony in Buckingham Palace. He loved to tell the story of having to ask an equerry what colour waistcoat he should wear with his morning suit for the audience. Black was the firm reply! Typical of his low-key style, he and his family celebrated the occasion by going to supper in a local Greek taverna and drinking retsina to celebrate! Outside of surgery, Willie had catholic interests. He was a keen member of the Surgical Sixty Travelling Club and a liveryman of the Barber’s Company, where he was master from 1991 to 1992. He also enjoyed the six-monthly meetings of the highly select 1995 Club, a luncheon club limited to six medically-qualified members and their spouses where no topic of conversation was off limits and discretion scrupulously observed. In retirement, he moved from London to Somerset, where he had a full-sized croquet lawn built in his back garden and established a local challenge cup, which was hotly competed for by his new found many friends in the area. He regularly played skittles in the local pub, became addicted to growing vegetables and spent much time helping on the farm run by his younger son. He also loved opera, a lifelong passion. Sir William met his future wife Joan (née Wheelwright), who later became a distinguished geneticist, while both were medical students in Oxford. They married in 1951 soon after they qualified and had four children: Robert, Graham, Diana and Clare. After 65 years of very happy marriage, Joan died in 2015. Until his early nineties, Willie was still travelling to London regularly, seemingly as fit and well as 20 years earlier, but increasingly he found the house and garden too much to look after by himself and moved into a small flat, where he never really settled. His last days were in a nearby care home, where he died on 28 April 2019, aged 94.