Celebrating the springboard donation to Changing Faces

Twenty-five years ago this week, on Friday 25th October 1991, I received the very first donation to Changing Faces – and it was a full nine months before the charity was officially ‘launched’ and was therefore of even more significance. So I was delighted last week to be invited to have coffee with Greville and Lisa

Kathy Lacy – a woman of huge empathy who inspired thousands

It was with great sadness that I heard of Kathy Lacy’s death last Thursday after she’d been through a series of very difficult health problems. I’d seen her a fortnight ago and she was clearly in agony so it was a mercy. I first met Kathy (pictured above) at Victoria Station in July 1992 three

The birth of modern plastic surgery and the face equality campaign

The centenary of the cataclysmic Great War is happening all around us but is liable to be drowned out by last week’s European events. Let me call for a moment of reflection. We say on Armistice Day every November ‘we will remember them’ and we should this week. Lest we forget. On Friday 1st July,

Events in Paris and London today

My heart and prayers go out to everyone in France who are trying to come to terms with last night’s ghastly events in Paris. We at Changing Faces are ready to do anything we can to help those injured and their families and we are with all people who stand for freedom and democracy. Today,

Revealing the Lion Faced Man

James is away … Henrietta Spalding, Head of Advocacy at Changing Faces, writes a guest blog After a recent chance meeting with the mezzo opera singer, Alison Wells, last weekend I found myself going along to see a unique opera first at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at Kings Place in London. It was

From isolated recluse to respected citizen – a tale of two people

I was so delighted to be invited to comment last week on the extraordinary meeting of Richard Norris, a face transplant patient, with his donor’s sister, on the BBC and a number of other news outlets. (You can watch me on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on BBC Two from 31m 35s here.) Here was a

Elephant Man: A review

You have one week more to get to see Fourth Monkey’s superb production of Elephant Man at the atmospheric little theatre behind the Brockley Jack pub – and atmospheric is no exaggeration. From the moment the doors open and you search for a seat immersed by the fog of late Victorian London, you will be

Faces of the First World War

This weekend, people up and down the country will be marking Remembrance Sunday and remembering the hundreds of thousands of people who died in conflict. For me, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on the enormous advances in plastic and reconstructive surgery that resulted from the work of pioneering surgeons a hundred years ago –