W.E.D. Allen

William Edward David Allen (6 January 1901 – 18 September 1973) was a British scholar, Foreign Service officer, politician and businessman, best known as a historian of the South Caucasus—notably Georgia. He was closely involved in the politics of Northern Ireland, and had fascist tendencies.

Born in London and brought up in Hertfordshire, he was educated at Eton College (1914-1918), where he began to learn Russian and Turkish. He published his first book, The Turks in Europe, when he was eighteen. He was a special correspondent for the Morning Post during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the Rif War (1925).

In the pre-World War II years, he travelled 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 Historical Society; the Society published its own journal, Georgica, dedicated to Kartvelian studies.

His mother financed his personal enterprises until around 1935, and also provided a home at Commonwood House, Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, where he and his brothers could bring their guests at weekends: in Allen's case, he wrote later, these would include 'bizarre intellectuals, Caucasian philologists and exiled national leaders from the remoter parts of Central Asia'.

In 1940-1, he accompanied Orde Wingate on his mission to Abyssinia, and wrote a book of his experiences called Guerrilla War in Abyssinia. On 6 March 1941 the Italian division won a victory; what they did know was that a much smaller force opposed them. Wingate set out to fool them in a game of deception: Allen remarked "Perhaps God fights on the side of great hearts and not of the big battalions." The tactic of surprise attacks behind unnerved the garrison at Debra Markos which scarpered in some disorder. He also met and recorded the activities of other SOE comrades Tony Simonds and Billy Maclean remarkable for their informality and eccentricities as their soldierly demeanour.

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