Captivating poet at the cutting edge of surgery
MY PARTNER DAVID TOLHURST
OUR first meeting was like a scene from a film. there i was in the Peter Jones department store in Chelsea just before Christmas 2013 when my overstuffed carrier bag split and the contents scattered everywhere. Suddenly, a knight in shining armour stepped forward to help, offering me a new bag — and his telephone number.
He was nearing 80 but this witty man, an eminent plastic surgeon, had a captivating charm.
He invited me to dinner and soon we were swept up in a late-life whirlwind romance. Within weeks i’d moved to Edwardstone, in Suffolk to be with him. And so began a wondrous relationship. We had so much in common. David, who was born in new Zealand but who had lived and worked in Europe, had lost his wife Sonia to ovarian cancer two years before.
i grew up in Africa, the daughter of a doctor who specialised in tropical diseases, and had also been married to a medic. i’d lived in Cyprus, Spain and the U.S. before i returned to the UK.
So there was common ground. We also shared a love of classical music, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, museums, theatre and snooker, in particular, great admiration for Ronnie O’Sullivan. Our relationship was one of laughter and fun. David was always thinking of ways to amuse his friends.
When we were invited to dinner, he’d pen a poem rather than a ‘thank you’ letter, or perhaps paint our host and hostess a picture, often a landscape.
As a plastic surgeon, David specialised in helping those who had suffered terrible burns or had some kind of deformity.
He saw his job as a way to make their life better, and was a world-renowned pioneer of fasciocutaneous flaps — tissue flaps including skin, and connective tissue — which could help provide grafts when skin grafts alone would not be sufficient to cover bone during reconstructive surgery.
He was based in the netherlands for many years, with his wife Sonia and their daughters, Camilla and Charlotte, before returning to the UK to work at hospitals, including Great Ormond Street.
i must confess this is not David’s first mention in the Mail. He made an appearance once before after an allegation of ‘vandalism’.
He trimmed three twigs from a neighbour’s hedge that were blocking a security mirror he’d put up to combat a blind corner after a car was written off coming out of his driveway. the police who questioned him found it hilarious and were very apologetic. no action was taken.
David fell ill last December, suffering several mini strokes, then a bleed and swelling on the brain. it caused a rapid onset of dementia and he never returned home from hospital.
We all — his daughters, three grandsons and a granddaughter — miss him terribly.
i feel robbed of time with him. in the words of our favourite Johnny Mathis song, i thought we would be together ‘until the twelfth of never, and that’s a long, long time’.
Professor David Tolhurst, born september 24, 1934, died february 27, 2018, aged 83.