PIONEERING heart surgeon Stephen Westaby is delighted his memoirs have been shortlisted for the prestigious Costa Book Awards.

Prof Westaby, now retired, was a heart surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for nearly 40 years.

Last year the 69-year-old completed his final operation, having treated more than 11,000 patients.

His memoirs, Fragile Lives: A surgeon's stories of life and death on the operating table, was published earlier this year.

Now the dramatic life story has been shortlisted for the biography section of the Costa awards.

Prof Westaby, who lives in Bladon near Woodstock with wife Sarah and son Mark, 29, said: "I'm flattered and delighted that the book has been so well received and has now been shortlisted for these awards - I'm definitely up against some big hitters.

"The book was also the President's choice in the British Medical Association Book Awards.

"At times my career was controversial so I was pleased to get that endorsement from the BMA.

"I have written a substantial amount before - about 15 textbooks and 350 scientific papers and journals but Fragile Lives was my first go at writing for the public so it was very different."

In the biography category the former surgeon's book is competing with Xiaolu Guo for Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up (Chatto & Windus), Caroline Moorehead for A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini (Chatto & Windus), and Rebecca Stott for In The Days of Rain (4th Estate).

Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on January 2.

The overall winner of the 2017 Costa Book of the Year will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in London on January 30.

Prof Westaby joined the John Radcliffe in 1986, when it was performing 100 cardiac surgery operations a year.

He pioneered new techniques, taking the number up to 1,600 a year by 1996.

He said earlier: "When I came to Oxford, I used to operate every single day.

"When there was only me, the workload was such that I just had to operate continuously every day and at weekends.

"We did more operations in a day than anywhere else – children's and aortic surgery – with patients from all over the world."

His most famous patient was Peter Houghton, who became the longest living person with an electric heart pump in the world, having previously been given a few weeks to live.

After Prof Westaby fitted the device in 2000, Mr Houghton lived for another seven years.

The book is full of incidents where, faced with a dying patient, the surgeon takes risks that go against what he describes as 'NHS bureaucracy'.

Baby Kirsty was dying of heart failure at six months when Prof Westaby decided to make a last-ditch attempt, using a technique which had been discredited for adults.

Kirsty's 'last hope' restarted her reconfigured heart and it gradually repaired itself.

Having spent 40 years as 'an adrenaline junkie' undertaking a stream of three-hour operations, Prof Westaby gave up surgery last year.

Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby is published by HarperCollins at £14.99.