Surgeons are widely regarded as the monarchs of medicine. Their intellectual brilliance and manual dexterity may indeed be outstanding but there is one vital aspect of healthcare in which they lag behind the medical profession as a whole: research.

“The stark fact is that only 1.3 per cent of UK government funding for medical research is spent on surgery research,” says Norman Williams, chairman of the research board of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the professional body for surgery in England. The proportion of medical research charities’ spending on surgery is similarly low.