Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in EnglishAfter more than a decade, the hatred that had simmered within Peter Brooks finally exploded. In the early hours of January 14, 2021, dressed head to toe in camouflage clothing, he left his house and cycled a mile to the family home of former colleague Graeme Perks.There, the 61-year-old smashed his way into the conservatory with a crowbar and doused the ground floor with petrol he had brought with him. Had he not been disturbed by Mr Perks, his intention was to set fire to the former vicarage, trapping its sleeping occupants in the bedrooms above.Thwarted, Brooks lunged at the then 65-year-old with a knife, inflicting a single stab wound to the stomach, before fleeing.Following a three-week trial, Brooks was yesterday convicted of attempted murder, attempted arson with intent to endanger life and possession of a knife in a public place – although he was not in the dock to hear the verdicts. He faces a potential life term.That the knife wound did not kill Mr Perks was entirely down to luck – in 95 per cent of cases it would have proved fatal.After the knife sliced into his liver, pancreas and small intestine, he lost ten pints of blood and was placed in a medically induced coma – only surviving after multiple operations and a month in hospital.In another world and at another time, that miraculous medical escape would have been something the two men might have marvelled at. After all, they were both skilled surgeons – men who had dedicated their careers to saving and improving the lives of others. But, as the Daily Mail can reveal today, it was in the workplace that Brooks’ bitter animosity towards his victim took root. Burns surgeon Peter Brooks ‘hated’ his respected colleague and ‘wanted him out of the way’ – so he set fire to his house in 2021 Graeme Perks, one of the country’s most respected plastic surgeons, was stabbed in the stomach after he disturbed Brooks trying to set fire to his home, only surviving after multiple operations and a month in hospital Woken by a noise, Mr Perks ran downstairs where he was struck by a strange smell and the damp floor – mistaking Brooks for his son, Henry, he told how ‘nothing was said, and the next thing I remember was feeling a blow to my body’In 2008, Brooks joined Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust as a consultant plastic surgeon. His specialism was treating burns victims – a bitter irony given his later arson plot. Mr Perks was already at the hospital and by 2010 was running the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Burns Surgery, building a reputation as one of the country’s most respected plastic surgeons.But trouble was brewing.Brooks was unhappy with how the section was run, complaining to management about staffing levels in the children’s burns unit which he claimed put patients at risk. He would allege that rather than his complaints being dealt with, he was ‘persecuted’ and ultimately suspended from his job.In 2015, he took the hospital to an employment tribunal – demanding a staggering £5 million in compensation. In his evidence he was particularly critical of Mr Perks, claiming he had negotiated a ‘job plan’ for himself which allowed him to work for 12 days and then take eight off, an opportunity to ‘maximise his private sector income’. He also alleged that Mr Perks had threatened to ‘finish him’ – and wanted him out of his department.Brooks lost the case. But he would not let the matter lie, appealing in vain against the ruling and then challenging an order that he pay the hospitals costs.The final straw came on January 11, 2021, when the hospital started disciplinary proceedings against him. Incredibly, despite having been ‘excluded’ from the hospital since 2014, Brooks had continued to receive an annual NHS salary of £106,000, supplemented with private work.Mr Perks, who had retired only two weeks earlier, was due to submit a statement in evidence. On January 13, Brooks tried in vain to postpone the hearing. And so it was that just hours later he set out to silence his former boss once and for all.As Tracy Ayling KC told the jury, a ‘clearly frustrated’ Brooks ‘made a conscious decision to take the law into his own hands’. Brooks used camouflage clothing for the attack after a bitter animosity had been brewing for his colleague The burns surgeon then smashed his way into the conservatory with a crowbar before dousing the ground floor with petrol‘The prosecution does not have to prove a motive for any crime,’ she said. ‘However, it is clear that the defendant hated Graeme Perks and you can conclude on the evidence you will hear that he wanted him out of the way.’Ahead of the trial, Brooks sacked his legal team, then went on hunger strike and failed to attend proceedings, claiming it would be ‘inhumane’ to force him to attend court in his current condition.The ‘narcissistic’ medic had continually attempted to derail legal proceedings, causing the trial to be rescheduled nine times.After the attack, and when news broke that Mr Perks’ life was hanging in the balance, colleagues, friends and neighbours were quick to praise his qualities as a surgeon and a man.His father was a Royal Navy fighter pilot who died when Mr Perks was just nine.He enjoyed a 25-year career at the Nottingham trust. A specialist in microsurgical reconstruction after cancer surgery, by the time he retired in December 2020 he had also been president of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS).‘Graeme is an amazing colleague,’ Mark Henley, the then BAPRAS president, said at the time. ‘His dedication to patients, family and friends is an inspiration to us all and with his wisdom, kindness and humanity he has enabled us to achieve many things that I would never have thought possible.’Also willing him on were residents of the village of Halam, Nottinghamshire, where Mr Perks and his wife Beverley had raised four children in their £1 million detached home. The Victorian property sits in two acres of picturesque gardens that are opened to the public every year. Brooks’s intention was to set fire to the former vicarage, trapping its sleeping occupants in the bedrooms above After stabbing Mr Perks, Brooks was found on a park bench the next morning muttering about his ‘life being ruined’ and that he was ‘going to be sacked from his job at the hospital’.As neighbour Graham Podmore observed: ‘You couldn’t wish to meet a nicer more mellow, guy than Graeme – this is a lovely village, and this kind of thing just doesn’t happen here.’In the immediate aftermath of the incident, locals speculated that Mr Perks must have been assaulted after disturbing a burglar. But it would soon become apparent that his attacker was not only known to him, but lived little more than a mile away in the market town of Southwell.There Brooks and his wife Jo had raised their four daughters in a £700,000 detached property.Residents living nearby were less complimentary about their surgeon neighbour, telling how he had become embroiled in numerous boundary disputes and parking rows after moving into the cul-de-sac in 2008.One neighbour, who asked not to be named, told how Brooks had objected to several trees on their property, even instructing tree surgeons to cut one down because he was worried it might fall on his property. ‘We’ve never had a neighbour with so many concerns about things that were never a concern to us,’ he said.‘We started to avoid him because he seemed a bit odd and we didn’t want any more issues.’Another neighbour told how Brooks had made his life ‘hell’, training his CCTV on to his property and challenging neighbours’ building projects.‘The man is unhinged – he’s sociopathic,’ he said. ‘He bullies all the people who border him. If I get my lawnmower out he’ll get out one of his motorbikes and rev it up on his drive. If my surveyor writes to him, he’ll reply with comments like: “I don’t recognise your professional qualifications”.’ A container of fuel was found inside Brooks’s cycle pannier which he had used to douse the bottom floor of Mr Perks’ house Brooks set off from his home on his bicycle, riding under the cover of darknessThose criticisms aside, Brooks was undoubtedly a successful surgeon, working as a consultant firstly in Manchester and then moving to Nottingham.In 2013, he made headlines after becoming the first surgeon to treat a burns victim with Botox. The injuries had left 54-year-old Karen Croule with a constant itch, which Brooks cured with the jabs. But by then he was already embroiled in the long-running dispute with his employers, his employment tribunal claim focusing on complaints he had made between 2011 and 2014.Under the law, whistleblowers who make disclosures are protected from any subsequent ‘detrimental treatment’ – something he claimed to have suffered from.During a 27-day hearing, Brooks alleged that other doctors had abandoned burn victims for more lucrative areas of work, such as cosmetic breast surgery or to set up skin cancer clinics.‘My impression was that resources were being diverted from burns work to breast work under Mr Perks’ tenure,’ he wrote in his witness statement. ‘That was leaving the burns service short of resources.’ He also alleged that in a meeting in December 2011, Mr Perks had threatened to ‘finish him’ and wanted to remove him from his department.Dismissing Brooks’ case, the tribunal found that on the balance of probabilities such a remark was never made. It was also critical of his evidence.‘The tribunal did not find the claimant to be an impressive witness,’ it concluded. ‘In particular it appears to be the claimant’s case that everything that happened to him in this case was part of a conspiracy against him brought about by his making of protected disclosures.‘That is a contention which we cannot accept and indicates that the claimant was seeking to embellish his evidence during the course of his witness statement and cross examination.’ Brooks’s blood was seen on the garage door after the attack – one neighbour described him as ‘unhinged’ and ‘sociopathic’ Brooks’s blood was also identified at the scene of the attack where he stabbed Mr Perks in the stomach after he disturbed him breaking into his house Mr Perks was seen leaving Loughborough Magistrates’ Court last week after giving evidence at the trialMr Perks, in contrast, was found to be ‘reliable and truthful’.But the 2016 judgement was far from the end of the matter. Brooks took the decision through two appeals. Both were rejected.The hospital trust then applied to recover £170,000 in legal costs from Brooks, claiming the case he brought ‘had no foundation’.In 2018, the tribunal again ruled in the hospital’s favour. It also ruled that Brooks could afford to pay the costs, observing that while suspended for four years ‘he has throughout been in receipt of his salary of approximately £106,000 per annum’, while also working in the private sector.Brooks refused to let the matter lie, appealing against the costs ruling in 2019. Yet again he lost – racking up more legal costs. But his personal vendetta against Mr Perks was not forgotten. In 2019 the hospital began a disciplinary process looking at Brooks’ conduct and the breakdown in working relationships between him, his colleagues, and the organisation. Brooks was warned he could finally lose his job.Attempts to find another solution failed, with Brooks ‘at every stage’ insisting that it was not him who should be made to leave the hospital – but Mr Perks. In an email in November 2020, he wrote: ‘It is essential that the long-overdue retirement of Graeme Perks be brought forward.’When the final hearing was convened online in January 2021, Brooks tried to get it halted.On January 13, he claimed his internet router was not working so could not take part. He turned down the trust’s offer of an office, saying that due to Covid restrictions ‘travel was illegal and would put him and his family at risk’. Mr Perks had made a statement that the hearing was to consider, and which Brooks would have been aware of. ‘I put my hand to the area where I felt it was warm and sticky, and I felt something poking out from my abdomen and I decided I must have been stabbed,’ Mr Perks described In 2019 the hospital began a disciplinary process looking at Brooks’ conduct and the breakdown in working relationships between him, his colleagues, and the organisation And so it was on January 14, that Brooks set off from his home on his bicycle, riding under the cover of darkness.As well as a crowbar, he had cans of petrol, matches and a knife.His intention, the court heard, was to break into Mr Perks’ house, set fire to it and if necessary, stab his former colleague.‘In short, he intended to kill Mr Perks,’ the court was told. He very nearly succeeded.Woken by a noise, Mr Perks ran downstairs where he was struck by a strange smell and the damp floor. Noticing a figure in the garden wearing dark clothing, he thought it might be his 29-year-old son Henry, who was staying at home while on leave from the Royal Engineer Commandos.But then the intruder turned to him, the head-torch he was wearing shining into his eyes. ‘Nothing was said, and the next thing I remember was feeling a blow to my body,’ Mr Perks told detectives.‘I put my hand to the area where I felt it was warm and sticky, and I felt something poking out from my abdomen and I decided I must have been stabbed, and that I needed to get back to the house. I turned back to the house but I don’t remember anything after that.’Brooks, meanwhile, fled the scene on his bicycle. He was found the next morning, asleep on a bench in a communal garden in Southwell. He was muttering words along the lines of his ‘life being ruined’, and that he was ‘going to be sacked from his job at the hospital’. The knife sliced into Mr Perks’s liver, pancreas and small intestine and he lost ten pints of blood before being placed in a medically induced coma Brooks made several attempts to delay the justice process by representing himself in court, insisting on corrective surgery, hunger strikes and injuring himselfFollowing his arrest Brooks gave ‘no comment’ interviews to police. He then proceeded to use every trick in the book to delay justice.In his first trial, in 2022, he insisted on representing himself, something the court reluctantly agreed to, and then periodically refused to attend the court in person, staying in the cells. The case collapsed when Brooks was hospitalised with osteoradionecrosis of his jaw – a complication of previous radiotherapy treatment – which had progressed to the extent that his jaw had fractured.Over the following two and a-half years, Brooks caused further delays by saying he wanted to have corrective surgery to fix his jaw and then refusing it.In April 2024, he started a hunger strike but, having started eating again, the following month took a razor blade to his neck, causing a deep injury. In February, ahead of the latest trial, he started another hunger strike.Jurors were told by judge Mr Justice Pepperall that he was not attending the trial at Leicester Crown Court sitting at Loughborough, and that due to a ‘highly unusual combination’ of factors, he had chosen not to be represented by lawyers.As for Mr Perks, he told detectives that friends had been ‘surprised’ by the progress he’d made since leaving hospital. ‘You don’t get anywhere by giving up,’ he said. ‘That is how I was brought up. It feels like I have been given a second chance.’Something his erstwhile colleague will have plenty of time to ponder while in prison.
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