Early life

Crowther was born in West Yorkshire^{[lower-alpha 1]} on 15 March 1944. His parents worked in a cotton mill.^[1][3]

He attended Calder High School, and began hitchhiking around Europe while still a teenager. At the University of Liverpool, he studied biochemistry, and considered staying on to undertake a doctorate, but in the end his desire to travel proved too great.^[1][2][3]

BIT and Lonely Planet

In 1972, he joined the alternative information service BIT, where he oversaw the production of Overland to India and Australia. The guide impressed Tony and Maureen Wheeler, and in 1976 they invited him to join Lonely Planet.^[2][4][5]

Personal life

He met his first wife, Hyung Poon, whilst working on a guidebook in South Korea. They married in Seoul in 1982, and their son, Ashley, was born in 1989. After their marriage ended,^{[lower-alpha 2]} Crowther had a brief second marriage to a woman he met in Kenya, but this also ended in divorce.^[1][2]

Final years

In 2005, he sustained a head injury in an accident and moved to a residential care facility.^[2] He died in South East Queensland on 13 April 2021, at the age of seventy-seven, as a result of complications arising from dementia.^[3][1]