By Yomal Senerath-Yapa Geoffrey Dobbs, founder of the Galle Literary Festival, hotelier and philanthropist, has passed away at his home ‘Dorothy House’ in Wells, England, on Tuesday, 18 August. Well-known in Sri Lanka where he lived and entertained at Taprobane, the island off Weligama, Dobbs was affectionately called “the Tungku of Taprobane”. Dobbs was an [...]
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Geoffrey Dobbs, founder of the Galle Literary Festival, hotelier and philanthropist, has passed away at his home ‘Dorothy House’ in Wells, England, on Tuesday, 18 August. Well-known in Sri Lanka where he lived and entertained at Taprobane, the island off Weligama, Dobbs was affectionately called “the Tungku of Taprobane”.
Dobbs was an Anglo-Australian who came to Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s from Hong Kong, and restored a number of historic properties in the South apart from Taprobane- including The Sun House, a villa in Galle which is heralded as one of the first boutique hotels in the island.
Geoffrey Dobbs at the 2016 Galle Literary Festival
A product of the Wolverhampton Grammar School in England and Trinity College, Dublin and Cambridge, Dobbs had worked as a marketing executive and publisher with early career postings in Hong Kong, Pakistan and Bengal.
It was a conversation Dobbs had with the Sri Lankan expat writer Romesh Gunesekera in London that triggered the idea of the Galle Literary Festival which began in 2007 with Dobbs as founder-organizer. He remained associated with the festival till the end.
In 2015 he invented a sport he christened ‘Tuk tuk polo’ as a replacement of elephant polo where each player traveling in the back of a three-wheeler uses a mallet to strike the ball.
Dobbs was lucky enough to survive the tsunami when he and his brother Michael were swimming near Taprobane on Boxing Day in 2004, hanging on to a catamaran jammed against the shore.
Amidst his philanthropic ventures were Adopt Sri Lanka which targeted sustainable, micro-level community rehabilitation after the tsunami, Fish and Ships to rebuild and repair the damaged local fishing fleet while he also funded specialized exchange programmes connecting local teachers and schoolchildren with international institutions. His tsunami charities alone raised 5 million US Dollars.
Dobbs was aged 73 at the time of passing.
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Print Edition – The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
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