David Leonard Rayvern Allen (5 February 1938 – 9 October 2014)Michael Down "David Rayvern Allen obituary", The Guardian, 26 October 2014 was a cricket writer and historian, as well as a radio producer and presenter, a speaker and a musician."English-Speaking Union Hosts Lecture" ENCToday.com March 20, 2007"Book of the Year 2011 Winner Announced" The Cricket Society"Eleven Lords a-batting" His radio productions won awards including the 1991 Prix Italia for Who Pays the Piper, a collaboration with Richard Stilgoe.Prix Italia winners 1949-2010 RAI He died aged 76 in 2014.
Life and career Allen was born in Streatham, London, and went to school at Sir Walter St John's School, Battersea. He gained external music diplomas from the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Allen spent his working life as a radio producer with the BBC, working on a wide range of programmes before retiring in 1993."Obituaries", Wisden 2015, p. 175. Later, as a member of the MCC's Arts and Library committee, he was largely responsible for the club's Audio Archive Project, a collection of several hundred interviews with cricket people; he conducted more than a hundred of the interviews himself.
He won several awards for his cricket biographies. His Wisden obituary said of them that he was "conscientious, readable, judicious" and that he "did not flinch from the less agreeable aspects of his subjects' characters".
He married Rosemary Clark in 1966. They had two daughters.
Works
Radio King Vidor profile BBC Radio 1978 (presenter) Billy Wilder profile BBC Radio 1978 (interviewer) Who Could Ask for Anything More? A Celebration of Ira Gershwin BBC Radio 2 1996 (producer)
With Richard Stilgoe Used Notes Music on the Brain The Singing Wheelchair Hamburger Weekend (1984)Richard Stilgoe website Who Pays the Piper (1991)Who Pays the Piper BBC Radio 2 listings 1991
Cricket-related (partial list) A Song for Cricket (1981) The "Punch" Book of Cricket (1985) Cricket on the Air: A Selection from Fifty Years of Radio Broadcasts (1985) BBC Books Arlott on Wine (1987) (with John Arlott) Peter Pan and Cricket (1988) Constable & Co Sir Aubrey: A Biography of C. Aubrey Smith - England Cricketer, West End Actor, Hollywood Film Star (1st 1982), J. W. McKenzie, (2nd 1987), ; augmented edition: limited to 150 (2005), 2010: The Guinness Book of Cricket Extras (1988) (with Honor Head), Guinness Publishing Arlott: The Authorised Biography (2004) Jim: The Life of E. W. Swanton (2004) The Second Lord's Cricket Ground: Home of MCC, 1811-1813 (2006) MCCMCC Publications Songs of Cricket (2011) mentor for this Signum CD by cantabile - the London Quartet with guests Rory Bremner, Tim Rice, Richard Stilgoe, Alex L'Estrange, Eliza Lumley and Chris Hatt
Other Punches on the Page: A Boxing Anthology (1998) Living with London (2012) Methuen (with Nick Botting)
References