Tom Treasure

Tom Treasure was born in Islington, London in 1947, starting life not far from where the events of this book were taking shape. His parents had met in wartime London, brought together as part of the workforce to do emergency repairs on bomb damaged buildings and infrastructure, father as site carpenter and mother as the quartermaster at the commandeered Ivanhoe Hotel where the crew were billeted. The family left London for Cheltenham where he attended the Catholic primary school and passed the 11-plus for the Grammar School. His education was interrupted by severe asthma and he was hospitalised for six month. Seaside boarding school with the Christian Brothers was deemed the best solution. After that being a medical student at Guy’s in London was a welcome escape. Many of the doctors who were members of the Club chronicled in his book were his teachers and mentors. His first resident post at Guy’s was in cardiothoracic surgery which was his lifetime career from qualifying in 1970 to clinical retirement in 2007. He has been active in professional roles including serving as an elected member of council of the Royal College of Surgeons for eight years and President of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. In the 1990s he took a four-month sabbatical at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. During training he spent a year each in Canterbury, Cambridge, Newcastle upon Tyne and the University of Alabama but most of his adult life has been in London. He was consultant at The Middlesex and University College Hospitals during the 1980s, at St George’s in the 1990s returning to Guy’s for the remainder of his career.