Personal Life
Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where despite a stiff elbow (sustained sliding down the banisters at home as a child) he was a rowing blue.
Gillies married Kathleen Margaret Jackson on 9 November 1911, in London. They had four children. His youngest son Michael Thomas Gillies followed his father into medicine.
In addition to his career as a surgeon, he was also a champion golfer and inveterate practical joker. For many years his home was at 71 Frognal, in the heart of London's Hampstead village. A blue plaque on the front of that house now commemorates his life and work.
Read more about this topic: Harold Gillies
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