Stuart Butler

Stuart is the author of numerous Lonely Planet guides to Africa including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia. He has also written a (now out of print) Bradt guide to Benin and has authored hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and worked on numerous photographic projects.

Stuart's passion for all things African started young as he grew up listening to tales of his father's childhood in East Africa and his grandparents' stories of working on the earliest English-language editions of Kenyan newspaper, the 'Daily Nation'.

In his late teens he set off on a backpacking trip through East Africa and Ethiopia. He has since returned numerous times, traveling the length and breadth of the continent, including extended periods in East Africa.

His adventures in Africa have seen him brushing the desert sands off Sudanese pyramids, hitching a ride in a cargo boat from Eritrea to Saudi Arabia, hunting with Pygmies in the Central African Republic, meeting witches and spirits in Benin, and surfing his way around southern Africa.

His favorite part of the continent, though, is East Africa and on his most recent trip he was accompanied by his wife and two young children who, after a stay in a Maasai manyatta, seem equally smitten.

Stuart is originally from southwest England; he now lives with his wife and children on the beautiful beaches of southwest France.