Wakefield author will tell of his colourful life as a surgeon at book reading

Mr Mehta was born in India. As a boy, he was driven out of his home by rioting mobs during the Partition, spent many years in poverty and nearly lost an arm after an accident.

He said: "That arm was saved from amputation by an English surgeon – and I became determined to be a surgeon myself."

Mr Mehta's memoir Flying with a Broken Wing told of his early life. Now he has written a sequel Dare to Fly about the 50 years he has spent in England – and this is also packed with drama, laughter and heartache.

While working as a surgeon in Yorkshire, he has dealt with many strange and difficult cases – like the suicidal man who walked into casualty with a breadknife through his neck, the man who almost choked to death after dangerous chemicals polluted his lunchtime sandwich, and the little girl who had been wrongly treated for asthma after she swallowed a clothes peg.

He added: "My wide-ranging career in England also included being locked in a house by a drug addict who later committed murder, and having a rib broken by a violent drunk."

Admission is free to the event and there is no obligation to buy a book.