LIVES REMEMBERED

Giles Waterfield

Giles Waterfield, who has died aged 67, accomplished vital rescue work as director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1979-96). Subsequently he became a freelance art expert, covering a multitude of subjects and filling an extraordinary number of roles as lecturer, adviser and administrator.

He was also a distinguished author, both as novelist and art historian. His novel The

Long Afternoon (2000), a tragedy closely based on his grandparents’ life in a splendid villa in Menton, showed how a purposeless existence, for all its superficial attractions, risks sapping the will and turning aside the currents of action. A penetrating psychological study, it won the McKitterick prize.

When Waterfield took over as the first director of Sir John Soane’s great gallery in Dulwich, the institution was on its uppers. The new director was not merely a fine scholar, but also an innovative fundraiser. Born July 24 1949, died November 5 2016

Bobby Wellins

Bobby Wellins, who has died aged 80, was one of the finest jazz musicians Britain has ever produced. Because he worked mainly within conventional forms, such as the 32-bar American song and the 12bar blues, his originality may not have been obvious to the casual listener, but no one could miss the variegated beauty of his tone. The tenor saxophone has rarely sounded so eloquent.

Robert Coull Wellins was born in Glasgow on January 24 1936. His father, a Russian-Jewish emigré, played saxophone and clarinet in the Sammy Miller Showband and his mother, Sally, was the band’s singer. Taught by his father, Wellins was a fully competent saxophonist by his mid-teens.

After his National Service, when he studied at the RAF School of Music, he passed through a series of dance bands, including that of Vic Lewis, with which he visited the US in 1958. On the London scene in the early 1960s, Wellins’s wily, unpredictable phrasing and smoky tone with a melancholy edge sounded odd beside the full-on virtuosity of the current hero, Tubby Hayes.

He fell victim to the easy availability of narcotics in the West End. It began in 1964, as he was starting to achieve serious notice. In the early 1970s, with the support of his wife, Isobel, he pursued a five-year course of rehabilitation until “I was 40… and finished with it.” He announced his return with

Jubilation, the first of several albums with the pianist Pete Jacobsen. Born January 24 1936, died October 27 2016

Vijay Kakkar

Professor Vijay Kakkar, who has died aged 79, was a vascular surgeon and research scientist whose findings on how to prevent blood clots in patients undergoing surgery have saved millions of lives.

Arriving in Britain from India in 1961 to complete his postgraduate surgical training, Kakkar soon became interested in the treatment of thromboembolism – where a blood clot breaks loose from a vessel and travels through the bloodstream to plug another vessel, often with devastating consequences. Clots are a major risk for anyone undergoing surgery.

A landmark 1975 trial, which he led, found that treatment with heparin could prevent fatal embolism to the lung in patients undergoing surgery. Low-molecular-weight heparin has since become widely used by hospitals to prevent and treat thrombosis and its use on highrisk surgical patients has saved hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

In 1976 he was appointed professor of surgical sciences in the University of London at King’s, one of the very first doctors of Indian origin to be appointed to a professorship at a London teaching hospital. Born March 22 1937, died November 5 2016