British surgeon tells of Queen Elizabeth's moving corgis chat after horrifying Syria experiences

When Dr David Nott returned from Aleppo to the UK in 2014, he brought back agonising memories of the trauma unit he worked with in opposition northern Syria.

The besieged enclave had been repeatedly bombed and shelled by regime forces, sending women and children in their thousands to clinics and hospitals like the one Nott worked at for treatment.

Nott, who was an experienced surgeon of war zones across the world, was particularly affected by the scenes he witnessed in Aleppo, suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on his return to the UK from missions.

Nott told BBC Radio 4 show 'Desert Island Discs' that meeting Queen Elizabeth II for lunch in 2014 brought back traumatic memories of his time in Syria, which he fought hard to brush aside.

"If you consider where I had just come from… the hospital was being blown (up), everything around me was being shelled and I was coping with children who were badly, really badly, damaged and she must have detected something significant because I didn’t know what to say to her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to speak to her I just couldn’t, I could not say anything," he said.

"So she picked all this up. She said: 'shall I help you?' I thought, 'how on earth can the Queen help me? And all of a sudden the courtiers brought the corgis, and the corgis went underneath the table and she went to one of the courtiers and said: ‘can we open up that please?’

"So she opened up this lid and there were a load of biscuits and so she got one of the biscuits and broke it in two and said ok why don't we feed the dogs?' So for 20 minutes the Queen and I, during this lunch, just fed the dogs and she did it because she knew I was so seriously traumatised. The humanity of what she was doing was unbelievable."

The extraordinary moment when the great humanitarian & trauma surgeon David Nott met the Queen, shortly after his return from Aleppo. pic.twitter.com/LP2z7oGnpu

— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) September 8, 2022

Kirsty Young asked: "Did it help you?"

"Very much so, stroking animals, touching dogs, feeding them. We just talked about her dogs, how many she had. She was so warm, so wonderful, I’ll never forget it," he replied.

Nott also spoke of his time in Gaza, where he was asked what it was like working in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

"It was like the apocalypse... the shelter we were in was shaking, and I thought, 'I'm not going to survive this,'" he told the BBC outlet.

Nott broke down several times in the interview, recounting his times working in Palestine and Syria. He has repeatedly called for aid corridors into besieged opposition areas of Syria, throughout the war.

Nott finished the interview by telling of his lifeline wish to learn Arabic and chose 'Araby Masboot' as his one book to take with him to the imaginary desert island.

Nott was given the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award in 2016 and an OBE in 2017.

The David Nott Foundation provides support for doctors working in war zones across the world.