Yahoo Finance Rowland Morgan obituary
My brother Rowland Morgan, who has died after a heart attack aged 75, was an author who was known to Guardian readers for his columns of statistics, Digitations, which appeared weekly in the paper in the 1990s.
The columns listed surprising stats on a range of subjects, but especially on the environment. “British Telecom’s scrap tyres each year would form a column 44 times the height of the London BT Tower,” he told us in July 1995. The same year, he informed readers that “Henry VIII had an average of five enemies a day executed”. He wrote a similar column for the Independent on Sunday.
The columns reflected Rowland’s enormous curiosity on subjects from warfare to sex and everything in between. They were collected in two books, Planet Gauge and Digitations (1993 and 1996). He also produced a flood of books of statistics, historical stories and puzzles between 1992 and 2005, at least nine of which were translated into French and another into Estonian. Rowland had a deep concern about the fate of planet Earth.
Rowland was born in Brighton, East Sussex, to Tudor and Dylys Morgan (nee Stowe), who ran a pharmacy, and attended Brighton college. He studied English and French at Selwyn College, Cambridge, graduating in 1967, and in 1968 he went off to Canada, where he became a trainee journalist on the Vancouver Sun.
For four years he then edited the Georgia Straight paper. In 1980 he married the sculptor Emily Disher. Together they produced a successful series of Then and Now photo volumes about British Columbia, Vancouver, San Francisco, Victoria BC and Seattle, published between 1977 and 1979 under his baptismal name Roland. He added the “w” as a gesture to his Welsh roots.
Rowland and Emily moved to the south of France where they set about restoring ancient houses in and around Uzès. They returned to the UK in the early 90s, living in Twickenham and on Eel Pie Island, west London. Rowland wrote his columns and created content for Granada TV and Channel 5. In 1993 he and Emily launched the World One-Day Novel Cup, in which entrants had to write a book in a day. Terry Pratchett was the patron and it was sponsored by the Groucho Club. Runner-up in 1995 was Jon Ronson. The competition continued until 1997.
Canada’s call was powerful and the couple returned to Vancouver in 2003 with their two children. Rowland turned his attention to the events of 9/11, writing two books in collaboration with Ian Henshall.
He enjoyed life in Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island, and in particular his yacht, Calypso.
He is survived by Emily, their children, Rosa and Henry, his granddaughter, Zara, and grandsons, Jasper and Sequoia.
