Acclaimed author suffered stroke at Wensleydale home (From The Northern Echo)

Acclaimed author suffered stroke at Wensleydale home

4:54pm Friday 27th November 2009

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ACCLAIMED author Geoffrey Moorhouse died yesterday after suffering a stroke at his North Yorkshire home.

The 78-year-old was taken ill last Thursday at his house in Gayle, near Hawes, where he has lived since 1982.

Mr Moorhouse, who was born in Bolton, was taken by ambulance to the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, where he died yesterday morning.

The author of 29 non-fiction books, many of which were written at his Wensleydale home, his subjects ranged from cricket and rugby, the peoples of Central Asia to Tudor history.

In 1982 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his To The Frontier won the Thomas Cook Award for the best travel book of the year in 1984.

He suffered a near fatal heart attack in 1990 but went onto make a miraculous recovery after undergoing heart by-pass surgery.

He was born in 1931 in Bolton, the son of a Congregational minister, and was educated at Bury Grammar School.

He spent two years in the Royal Navy before becoming a reporter with the Bolton Evening News, later working on newspapers in New Zealand.

Mr Moorhouse returned to the UK and joined The Manchester Guardian as a features writer for seven years before becoming an author.

He leaves a partner, Susan Bassnett and three children, Jane, Andrew and Michael.

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