2023 – David Nott in Conversation with Kate Mosse

The Minerva Theatre, Chichester. 27th January 2023

Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day brought David Nott to Chichester for Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January 2023, ‘In conversation with historian, novelist and Cicestrian, Kate Mosse.’

We welcomed a full house to The Minverva Theatre and the audience were left in awe of this amazing surgeon who goes into war zones and trains junior doctors to undertake unbelievable surgery to patients wounded in war zones. The Question and Answer session that followed David’s talk was handled masterfully by Kate Mosse and enlightened the audience still further as to his motivation and experiences.

For nearly 30 years David Nott, a surgeon with the NHS, has volunteered in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Ukraine, David Nott has stood amidst trauma and bloodied chaos to deliver extraordinary care, in extreme situations. Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.

David Nott is a Welsh consultant surgeon who works mainly in London hospitals as a general and vascular surgeon, but is famous worldwide for his volunteer work in disaster and war zones. Having recognised that training others could greatly increase his capacity to help, Nott established the David Nott Foundation, along with his wife Elly, to organise training in emergency surgery for others working in war and disaster zones. He has been honoured for this dangerous work and is now often styled the Indiana Jones of surgery. He began working in disaster and war zones in 1993 when he saw footage of the war in Sarajevo. He has worked in disaster and war zones for several weeks each year since then, working as a volunteer surgeon for agencies such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross. He has also served in a similar capacity for the Royal Auxiliary Air Force where he holds the rank of wing commander. The locations have included Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chad, Darfur, Gaza, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Sierra Leone and opposition-held areas of Syria. Between 2013 and 2014 Nott trained and assisted medical students and other doctors to conduct trauma surgeries in opposition-held East Aleppo.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he visited Ukraine to train surgeons, in conjunction with UOSSM International.