Overview
- English died peacefully at his home in Oxford on Sunday, his family said in a statement released by Royal Papworth Hospital.
- He performed the landmark August 1979 transplant on 52-year-old Keith Castle at Papworth after an earlier January attempt in which patient Charles McHugh survived 17 days.
- Castle lived nearly six years after the operation, signaling that long-term survival was achievable in Britain after a decade-long pause following poor outcomes in 1968–69.
- English overcame official resistance and funding refusals, studied improving results in California, and secured local backing in Cambridge to proceed.
- He later helped carry out Europe’s first heart–lung transplant in 1984 and went on to lead the Royal College of Surgeons and the British Medical Association.