Consultant surgeon, Sir Patrick Sellors, who was the Queen's eye surgeon for almost two decades, has died, aged 76, at St Thomas' Hospital, London.

He was knighted by the Queen in the 1999 new year honours for his efforts to restore the late Queen Mother's failing eyesight.

He was advanced Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honour in the Queen's personal gift.

Sir Patrick, who lived at West Runton in north Norfolk, had been made Lieutenant of the RVO in 1990. He was a keen gardener and golfer.

He was the third generation of the family to practise medicine.

His grandfather was a general practitioner in Wandsworth, London, and later Southend, and his late father, Sir Thomas Holmes, known as 'Uncle Tom,' was a pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon of the highest repute.

After Rugby School and Oriel College, Oxford, he furthered his medical studies at the Middlesex Hospital.

He was a registrar at the Moorfields Eye Hospital and then became one of the youngest ophthalmic consultants at St George's Hospital, London, while just into his thirties, where he remained for almost 30 years.

In 1974, he was appointed surgeon-oculist to the Queen's Household and in 1980 was made the Queen's surgeon-oculist until he retired in 1999.

He held positions at many of London's leading hospitals and was also ophthalmic surgeon at King Edward VII Hospital for Officers between 1975 and 1999.

He was an author and contributor to professional journals and medical publications. He was secretary to the Ophthalmic Society and also an examiner before being elected president of the Royal Society of Medicine's ophthalmic section in 1992.

For more than a quarter of a century, he served the Medical Defence Union until standing down in 2003.

In 1961, he married Gill, Lady Sellors, who survives together with three children, Jonathan, Jane and Richard.

A funeral service will be held at All Saints' Church, Beeston Regis, near Sheringham, at 2pm on Friday, October 15.

Michael Pollitt