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Reg Butler, writer of the many travel
reviews here on laterlife.com, died recently at the age of 84.
He will be sadly missed. Reg was a real example of making the
most of later life, and even in his final days was still writing
for Choice magazine and had two travel books on the go, as well
as writing for laterlife.com. He had a fascinating life, and the
short tribute below should be of interest even to those who only
knew him through his travel writing.
A Tribute to Reg Butler
 Reg was born in October 1922 – a cockney –
within the sound of Bow Bells. His mother left him as a baby in
the care of this grandparents who largely brought him up. His
father was a chef and often without work, so times were quite
difficult for the family – nevertheless Reg always said he had a
very happy childhood, playing with the local kids on the street
as one could do in those more traffic-free days.
He was always a clever lad, especially at mathematics and
English and won a scholarship to Grammar School – the Strand
School - where he discovered a flare for languages and became
proficient in French and German.
He passed the Civil Service exam, near the top of the list of a
thousand or so entrants, and went to work in the Tax Department.
At this time he took to writing short stories in his spare time
and soon found a market for them and was earning more from the
stories than his full-time job.
He volunteered for the RAF at the outbreak of the War and passed
his medical, but soon after fell seriously ill and was
hospitalised for nearly a year. The result was the loss of one
lung, so a service career was not open to him any more. This was
perhaps a blessing in disguise as such a high proportion of
young men were lost in Bomber Command.
After the War he left the Tax Office, and with Europe opening up
again took time off to travel. His first articles, sold in 1946,
chronicled his experiences cycling across Europe and he wrote
weekly, short, humorous stories for 6 years for the magazine
Blighty. Then, after a 9 month back-pack trip to the middle
East, Greece and Turkey wrote his book `At large in the Sun'.
He looked for jobs that would allow him to travel, write and
earn a living and became a courier with the coach firm Fourways,
conducting groups, mostly overseas visitors, on classic grand
tours around Europe, and pioneer tours to east Europe.
Reg met Mary, his wife to be, in the spring of 1952. They were
married in the October of that year. They were a good team,
Mary's artistic talents meant she could illustrate the travel
books and help on the advertising side with drawings and layouts
for the papers Reg worked for. After a brief spell in Reg's
bachelor flat in Chelsea they moved to the Chiltern village of
Frieth in 1954, an area Reg had discovered with pleasure during
weekend cycling trips. Their two children, Christopher and Kathy
were both born at Whin Cottage.
Courier work continued, alongside writing for a long list of
provincial papers, overseas magazines and trade papers. He
started work for the Wall Street Journal as their
representative, mainly for Greece and Turkey and for the Tobacco
and Paper publications in those areas, as well as the Far East.
So he was travelling a lot and gathering information and photos
for travel articles at the same time.
Latterly when newspaper work dried up he contributed to
magazines like Choice and Trade Papers on Tea and Coffee.
Anything he wrote about, he studied, so became quite an expert
on a variety of topics.
He wrote a series of 25 travel guides covering Europe and large
parts of the World and became a founder member of the Guild of
Travel Writers and was a member of the NUJ. He became travel
editor to 2 websites for the over 50s, one of them being
laterlife.com, covering various travel
and computing topics.
He enjoyed camping and caravaning holidays with the family and
took up bee-keeping and wine-making as hobbies. He loved the
countryside, in particular blackberrying. He also loved his
wonderful garden, and although Mary did most of the work, he
loved to relax in it. Arthritis rather curtailed his activities,
but he continued to travel, with a stick, up to his last year –
he was in fact busy working on 2 books when he went into
hospital for acute breathing problems on the Friday before he
died – one book was an entertaining autobiography on growing up
in London in the 1920s/30s and the other about the variety of
`tipping customs' around the World. In fact he took his laptop
with him in the ambulance as if to say there is still a future.
Reg was truly a man for all seasons, an excellent journalist and
linguist with many interests and a fund of knowledge and stories
to share.
He will be sadly missed by family and many friends and our
thoughts are especially with Mary, Christopher and Kathy at this
time.
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