Anthony Roberts OBE writes:
With nothing else to do during Covid, I started writing my memoirs.
Volume I ‘Scholarship Boy to Engineer, Plastic Surgeon and Sportsman’ was published last year. This is an illustrated account of my training and working life firstly as a chemical engineer, and then after changing my xxxx and retraining as a medical doctor in four different countries, my life up to becoming a consultant plastic surgeon. And then some chapters about my sporting life which reached an unsuccessful peak in the sailing Olympic Trials. I did represent the British Universities in two sports, and various universities and colleges in five others, which included half-blues at both Oxford and Cambridge.
Professor John Onians of the University of East Anglia has written – “From the moment I started to read it I discovered I couldn’t put it down. There were several reasons for this surprising intellectual seduction. One was that I became fascinated by the human story. What new physical or mental activity were you going to get involved in next, and how deep was that involvement going to become? What would be the role in that involvement of each new individual, whether man friend or girlfriend, colleague or sporting partner, and each new institution, whether college or university, club or team? So, many congratulations. The volume is a tour de force of memory, analysis, and synthesis.”
Volume 2 ‘Plastic Surgery in Wars, Disasters and Civilian Life’ was published this year. This concerns my working life from the time that I became a consultant at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and includes my contributions to four wars and six major disasters around the world. It also records my working or teaching in 45 countries, and the 25 in which I have operated. The last chapters are about my work and teaching after retirement from the NHS when I was volunteering working or teaching until last year with St John Ambulance and other charities. There is also a chapter about my research, and a final somewhat controversial chapter about my thoughts on the few positives and the many negatives of the changes in the NHS in the fifty years of my involvement.
Sir Tim Waterstone has written about this book – “I found this an extraordinary account of Professor Anthony Robert’s extraordinary life, not least for the sense it gives not just of his immense professional skill, but of a real humanity which accompanies it.”
All profits from the sale of these two volumes will be donated to ‘Restore – Burn and Wound Research’ – the charity that I set up 35 years ago. Needless to say money is needed by the Trust which continues to do research.
The books are available from Waterstones, Smiths or any bookshop. If you wish to buy a signed and dedicated volume or volumes please contact me at ahnroberts@gmail.com. From me they are £25 each including the postage.
Please pass this information to your friends – and do not forget that Christmas will be coming and they would make ideal presents.
