Bruce Bailey was an innovative plastic surgeon at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, on 29 February 1928, where his father, John Bailey, was national secretary of the Cooperative party. His mother was Anne née Glaser, the daughter of a tailor. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Edmonton Latymer School, before going to the London Hospital, where he qualified in 1949. He did his National Service as a medical officer in the parachute regiment and was then a senior surgical specialist at Millbank for a further two years. His plastic surgery training was at Stoke Mandeville, where he worked with J P Reidy. From 1963 to 1990 he was a consultant at Stoke Mandeville. He was a general plastic surgeon through much of his career, but he developed expertise in burns, flap reconstruction and hand surgery. He spent a year at the Shriners Unit in Galveston, Texas, investigating the treatment of burns. He favoured early excision and grafting for large deep burns. But it was hand surgery that was perhaps his main love. He applied his skills to the treatment of major injuries and congenital hand deformities with his usual enthusiasm. He helped set up combined hand clinics with rheumatologists, after recognising that patients with rheumatoid hand deformities could benefit from early treatment and were not always being referred for surgery. He was always willing to adopt new methods and challenge convention. He saw the value of neonatal cleft lip repair and open-palm techniques for Dupuytren's contracture, both procedures that are not widely practised. He wrote a monograph on bedsores, favouring aggressive surgery, as he did for burns, but only when the wound was 'healthy' and the patient ready for the operation. He was a visiting surgeon at Gujarat Cancer Institute, India. As a result, several young Indian doctors came to work at Stoke Mandeville. He married Jean Ridden in 1950. They had one son, Michael Bailey FRCS, a consultant urologist at Epsom, and three daughters. He was a perfectionist even in his leisure pursuits: he sustained numerous injuries while parachuting, playing rugby, climbing and rally driving. Despite developing an allergy to bee stings, he kept bees, and also grew mushrooms and produced eggs at his country home. He played bridge with his wife, loved music and was an accomplished pianist. His photographic skills were used to amass a large collection of clinical slides, to illustrate his inspiring lectures. He developed Parkinson's disease, and had to retire early from the NHS. He died from an aggressive melanoma on 29 April 2001.