My father, Dick Knowles, who has died aged 86, was a geography teacher and lecturer who devoted much of his spare time to running jazz clubs in London.
Dick was born in Lincoln to Sid Knowles, an art teacher and artist, and his wife, Ivy. Educated at Lincoln City school, he then attended St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, to study geography. His teaching career began at Rickmansworth grammar school in Hertfordshire in 1959, and while there he collaborated with a colleague, Peter Stowe, to produce two volumes of Europe in Maps: Topographical Map Studies of Western Europe, the first in 1969 (Book One) and the second in 1971 (Book Two) – both of which ran to many editions. These were followed, in 1976, by North America in Maps: Topographical Map Studies of Canada and the USA.
