Michael Middleton was an Edinburgh Scot from a medical family who became a general and vascular surgeon in Birmingham, active in training and examining. His father, David Skene Middleton, had qualified in both medicine and dentistry in the 1920s but practiced initially as an anaesthetist. An enthusiastic Territorial Army Colonel he led a Field Ambulance to France in 1939. In 1941 he was captured by the Japanese and imprisoned in Changi jail Singapore, where he gave anaesthetics and dealt with maxillofacial injuries. After the war he returned to Edinburgh to become a full-time maxillofacial surgeon. Michael was born in Edinburgh in 1933 and educated at Loretto and Edinburgh University Medical School. After an initial dalliance with obstetrics he trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh working for Sir John Bruce and Sir Michael Woodruff. In 1964 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. In 1968, unusually for a born and bred Edinburgh man, he left Scotland and was appointed as a general surgeon to East Birmingham (now Heartlands) and Solihull Hospitals. His sub-specialist interest was in the rapidly developing area of vascular surgery and he developed large NHS and private practices. He was a popular surgical trainer and became a member of the Specialty Advisory Committee in General Surgery. He examined for the Edinburgh FRCS, was an external examiner in Sydney and Dublin, and served on the board for the nascent Intercollegiate Fellowship examination. Michael Middleton had three children, a boy and two girls, none of whom followed him into medicine. His wife Patricia was the daughter of a Bishop. Her twice great-grandfather Sir John Kirk was an Edinburgh medical graduate who became a life-long friend of Joseph Lister when they both worked with James Syme. He subsequently served in the Crimean war, travelled for five years with David Livingstone and was British administrator in Zanzibar where he played a large part in the abolition of the slave trade. Throughout his life in England Michael Middleton’s attachment to his native Edinburgh remained strong. Despite this he had no trace of a Scottish accent, doubtless due to his public school education. Naturally he played golf, and often returned to Muirfield with the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.