Mark trained at Cambridge, graduating in 1985 with, for not entirely academic reasons, also a PhD. He undertook basic surgical training in East Anglia and Birmingham, and did his higher orthopaedic training in West London with fellowships in spine surgery in Adelaide and RNOH. He was full-time spine surgeon in Stoke-on-Trent (and for a while Oswestry) from 1997 to 2019 and has been gradually reducing clinical commitments since then. He now also works as a Medical Examiner, a rather different challenge. He has always been interested in infection and continues to work with infection control and infectious diseases teams.