Nicholas David Carr (known as Nick) was born in Leeds on 15 April 1951, the son of John Allen Carr and his wife Kathleen Mary née Peel. After attending Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, he studied medicine at Bristol University graduating MB, ChB in 1974. From 1976 to 1978 he did house jobs at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, passing the fellowship of the college in 1976. Moving to Manchester, he worked at the Withington and Stepping Hill hospitals from 1981 to 1983 and was research registrar to the eminent colorectal surgeon, Philip Schofield. In 1983 he won the Royal Society of Medicine’s John of Arderne medal in coloproctology. He moved to Bolton as a registrar in 1981 before taking up an appointment as a senior registrar at University College Hospital and the Middlesex four years later. In 1985 he obtained his MD for a thesis on colonic vasculature in radiation and inflammatory bowel disease. While based in London he also spent a year at St Mark’s Hospital and travelled to South Africa, where he worked with the Mpulmalanga group of hospitals. In 1990 he became a consultant general and colorectal surgeon to the Singleton Hospital in Swansea. Committed to the multidisciplinary approach when dealing with his patients, his flair and enthusiasm did much to raise the hospital’s reputation. He worked hard to establish a specialist colorectal unit and, when it opened in Swansea in 1993, it was a pioneering move for a district general hospital. The unit now employs some seven specialist colorectal surgeons. At the college he was a member of the Court of Examiners and at the Royal Society of Medicine a member of council of the section of coloproctology from 1994. He lectured at St Mark’s Hospital, London and was on the Welsh Surgical Training Committee from 1992. Involved in the founding of the European Society of Coloproctology, he was instrumental in building its world wide reputation. The West Wales Ileostomy Association and Ileo-Anal Pouch Group elected him as their president and he was also president, in 2008, of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland. A keen squash player when young, he also enjoyed diving, sailing and walking. An accomplished artist, he held several exhibitions and, in his retirement, studied for a degree in the history of art. In 1984 he married Gail Heather née Maxwell. He had been ill for a long time before he died at home on 2 September 2019 aged 68, and was survived by his wife, their children Matthew Robert and Faye Louise, and Leo, his grandson.