Geoff Crowther (15 March 1944 – 13 April 2021) was a British travel writer who wrote for

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and

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embarke ...

Life

Early life

Crowther was born on 15 March 1944 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. His parents worked in a cotton mill. He attended Calder High School, and began hitchhiking around Europe while still a teenager. At the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, he studied

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

, and considered staying on to undertake a doctorate, but in the end his desire to travel proved too great.

BIT and Lonely Planet

In 1972, he joined the alternative information service

, where he oversaw the production of ''Overland to India and Australia''. The guide impressed

Tony Tony may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tony (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Gregory Tony (born 1978), American law enforcement officer * Motu Tony (born 1981), New Zealand international rugby leagu ...

and Maureen Wheeler, and in 1976 they invited him to join

Personal life

He met his first wife, Hyung Poon, whilst working on a guidebook in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

. They married in

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

in 1982, and their son, Ashley, was born in 1989. After their marriage ended in 2000, Crowther had a brief second marriage to a woman he met in

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, but this also ended in divorce.

Final years

In 2005, he sustained a head injury in an accident and moved to a residential care facility. He died in

South East Queensland South East Queensland (SEQ) is a bio-geographical, metropolitan, political and administrative region of the state of Queensland in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million people out of the state's population of 5.1 million. Th ...

on 13 April 2021, at the age of seventy-seven, as a result of complications arising from

dementia Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...

Notable guidebooks

*''Africa on the Cheap'' (1977) *''South America on a Shoestring'' (1980) *''India: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1981) *''Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1982) *''Korea & Taiwan: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1982) *''Africa on a Shoestring'' (1983) *''East Africa: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1987) *''Morocco, Algeria & Tunisia: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1989) *''Kenya: A Travel Survival Kit'' (1991)

References

External links

Interview
with Ashley Crowther in 2021, in which he talks about his father. {{DEFAULTSORT:Crowther, Geoff 1944 births 2021 deaths 20th-century travel writers 21st-century travel writers Alumni of the University of Liverpool British travel writers People from West Yorkshire