Macdonald Critchley was born at Bristol, son of gas collector Arthur Frank Critchley and Rosina Matilda (née White); he was educated in
Bristol and received his medical degree from the
University of Bristol. He served with the
Royal Flying Corps. During World War II he was a Consulting Neurologist in the
Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve based at
HMS Drake. His contributions to knowledge depended not on technology, but on his power of observation and meticulous dissection of human sensibility and behaviour. The best known of his works were those on
aphasia and the
parietal lobes. and secondly Eileen Hargreaves, whom he married in 1974. He lived at Hughlings House (named in honour of John Hughlings Jackson), at
Nether Stowey in Somerset, where he died on 15 October 1997, aged 97. In 2013 the weekly undergraduate teaching round at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Queen Square was named after him - the Critchley Round. ==Associated eponyms==