William Edward David Allen

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William Edward David Allen (6 January 1901 – 18 September 1973) was an Ireland-born British scholar, Foreign Service officer, politician and businessman, best known as a historian of South Caucasus.

Born in London, he was educated at Eton College. He was a military correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the Rif war (1925). Allen stood unsuccessfully in Fermanagh and Tyrone at 1922 general election,[1] but was elected sevent years later on his next attempt, at the 1929 general election as the Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West.[2] He defected in 1931 to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and did not contest the 1931 general election.[2] He was a close friend of Mosley and helped him to pursue his Fascist ambitions from behind the scenes, by supporting him financially and by contributing mainly anonymous articles to The Blackshirt, including "The Letters of Lucifer". WED Allen also wrote a book BUF, Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (1934) under the pen name of James Drennan. It has frequently been reported that he was an MI5 informant but this now appears to be false.[3]

In the pre-World War II years, he traveled a lot and conducted extensive research on the history of the peoples of the Caucasus and Anatolia. In 1930, along with Sir Oliver Wardrop, he founded the Georgian Historic Society which published its own journal Georgica dedicated to the Kartvelian studies.

Allen was a Foreign Service officer from 1943 until he stepped down and returned to his native Ulster in 1949. Together with his two younger brothers, he ran David Allens, a major bill-posting company.

He was married: (1) from 1922 to 1932, to Lady Phyllis Edith Allen (nee King) (1897-1947), daughter of Lionel Fortescue King, 3rd Earl of Lovelace (1865-1929)[4] (2) from 1932 to 1939, to Paula Gellibrand (1898-1986), once Cecil Beaton's favourite model and formerly the wife of the Marquis de Casa Maury; and (3) from 1943, to Nathalie Maximovna.

[edit] Main works

  • The Turks in Europe (1920)
  • A history of the Georgian people (1932)
  • The Russian Military Campaigns of 1941-1943 (part 1, 1943)
  • The Russian Military Campaigns 1943-1945 (part 2, 1946)
  • Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turko-Caucasian Border 1828-1921 (by WED Allen and Paul Muratof, 1953)
  • David Allens - The History of a Family Firm 1857-1957 (1957) attributed to W.E.D. Allen but ghosted in part by his friend Kim Philby, the Communist spy.
  • Problems of Turkish Power in the Sixteenth Century (1963)
  • Russian Embassies to the Georgian Kings: 1589-1605 (1970)

[edit] External links

  1. ^ Craig, F. W. S. [1969] (1983). British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, 3rd edition, Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services, p.660. ISBN 090017806X. 
  2. ^ a b Craig, F. W. S. [1969] (1983). British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, 3rd edition, Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services, p.654. ISBN 090017806X. 
  3. ^ Statesecrets.co.uk
  4. ^ National Portrait Gallery
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Robert Lynn		 Member of Parliament for Belfast West
1929–1931		 Succeeded by
Alexander Browne