In 1969, my wife, Marianne, and I spent a month or two in a penthouse in Kennington, south London. It was small but beautiful – mainly for a bachelor. We had just returned from a year in Chicago, where I was teaching at the university’s medical school before I started at Harefield hospital.

The Kennington flat was not particularly convenient. I was really busy, spending days and nights at Harefield, on the outskirts of northwest London. It was a long journey, and we were expecting our first child. A colleague told me about a new estate in Ealing, west London, closer to the hospital, so we went to have a look. I thought: “Wow, this is just what we want.” My wife thought so too.

Our son, Andrew, was born in September that year at St Mary’s hospital. I was not there: I was operating. We moved into 23 Roseacre Close, in Ealing, a couple of months later. It was a townhouse with three bedrooms, a garage and a little garden. It was small but convenient. I can’t remember if we were the first or second people to live in it.

It cost about £9,000, so I had to have a big mortgage, and we needed a down payment of £1,500 or £2,000, which I had to borrow. I remember those early days at Harefield fondly. They were exciting, formative, with a lot of new developments in heart surgery. The whole field has changed dramatically and extremely fast. I have been fortunate to be associated with those developments in cardiac surgery that have given us new techniques for babies and for adults, new valves, transplantation and now stem-cell research and artificial hearts.

I remember my first heart-transplant operation vividly. It was in 1980, and I was surprised at the furore – we just didn’t expect so much media interest. I was trying to escape from the media and do my work, but when I drove home and opened the garage, there were photographers inside.

I didn’t respond well to the press then; I thought they were an unnecessary nuisance. Now I think differently: all clinicians and scientists have a duty to explain their work to the public. But I still don’t enjoy that side of things. On the whole, I am a private person, and my wife is totally against publicity.

In those days, heart transplantation created two reactions: it captured people’s imagination, but some were critical. They even said it was unethical. It created a lot of debate in the press; now, years later, the debate is about how we can do more.

I have always left the running of the house to my wife – she is obsessively house-proud. It has to be like a museum. Yet, although I was working hard, I was always devoted to the children. My elder daughter, Lisa, was born when we lived at Roseacre and I remember Andrew was jealous and became a bit naughty. The children had a bedroom each, and a playroom downstairs in the living room.

Lisa didn’t relate to me at all at first. I couldn’t even push her pram – she always wanted her mother – and if she saw me, she would start crying. That changed, and she became an affectionate little girl, always giggling. Now she is very protective.

Once, when the two children were small, we decided we didn’t see enough of each other as a family, and agreed to do something exciting. Bermuda sounded like a dream. We took Andrew and Lisa on holiday, but we were all blown away by gales – we couldn’t even walk on the beach. For the last three days, we went to the Bahamas for some sunshine.

On Sunday afternoons in London, we would take the children to a park and we would go to buy plants together for the garden. I have always been interested in the garden and we had some beautiful flowers there. Later, I developed an interest in growing orchids.

We had a lot of fun together. I had a bicycle and the kids used to ride behind me around Ealing. Andrew in particular loved anything that moved; later, he wanted fast cars. From the start, he was very much a boy, and always his own man. He’s a pilot now.

Four or five years later, when we were expecting our third child, Sophie, we knew Roseacre Close would be too small. The price had increased to about £25,000, and we liked the area, so we moved into a bigger house not far away. Then we moved again, but still in Ealing, where the schools were good for the children. But the time at Roseacre Close was one of our happiest there.

Chain of Hope, the charity Professor Yacoub established, carries out life-saving heart surgery on children in developing countries; www.chainofhope.org

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