Norman Blacklock

Who was Norman Blacklock?

Sir Norman James Blacklock KCVO OBE FRCS was a surgeon in the Royal Navy and later a consultant in urology and professor of medicine at Manchester University. He served as Medical Officer to The Queen on her overseas tours for 17 years, from 1976 to 1993. He became known to the accompanying press corps as "the Queen's Witch Doctor", and the Duke of Edinburgh nicknamed him "Hemlock". He was appointed an Extra Gentleman Usher in 1993.

Blacklock was born in Glasgow. His family were doctors with leanings towards the Royal Navy. Evacuated from his home in the Second World War, he was educated McLaren High School in Callander, and read medicine at Glasgow University. He worked as a junior registrar at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, and then did National Service in the Royal Navy from 1951, serving on board HMS Theseus and HMS Warrior, treating trauma cases.

He returned to medicine in 1954, working as a surgical registrar and lecturer in surgery at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and then at hospitals in Ipswich and London from 1956. He married Marjorie Reid in 1956, and they had one daughter and one son together, both of whom became doctors.