During World War II, he was a reporter in the Senate, closely observing Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, among others.

After graduating from Stanford, Drury went to work for the Tulare Bee in Porterville in 1940, where he won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial writing from the Society of Professional Journalists.

"[4] Drury enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 25, 1942, in Los Angeles and trained as an infantry soldier, but was discharged "because of an old back injury.

Russell Baker, hired at about the same time, recalled the circumstances in a remembrance published after Drury's death: He had a reputation as an elegant writer when he came to the paper.

Scotty Reston was then trying to persuade The Times to write plain English, and it was assumed that Allen was brought in to promote this campaign ...

[1] Drury later wrote a memorandum for his archives at the Hoover Institution in which he gives a full account of how the book came to be written and published.

[8] Baker was one of the first people to read the manuscript and describes his initial reluctance and then reaction: What lies I would be compelled to tell poor Allen ...

I took it home, ate, fixed a drink, sat down and with a heavy heart reached into the box for a fistful of manuscript.

My wife finished close behind, and the sight of her suppressing a tear at one point confirmed my hunch.The novel uses several incidents from Drury's fifteen years in Washington as pegs for the story, about a controversial nominee for Secretary of State.

It was adapted into a well-received Broadway play by Loring Mandel, who is known for a highly successful career writing for television.

[12][13][14][15] In 2009, Scott Simon of NPR wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "Fifty years after its publication and astounding success ... Allen Drury's novel remains the definitive Washington tale.

"[12] When it was republished, ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl wrote for The Wall Street Journal that it offers "a compelling portrait of American social and political history and even today is well worth reading.

A Shade of Difference (1962) is set a year after Advise and Consent, and uses the United Nations as a backdrop for portraying racial tensions in the American South and in Africa.

In 1971, Drury published The Throne of Saturn, a political/science fiction novel about the first attempt at sending a crewed mission to Mars in competition with a similar Soviet effort.

Drury wrote, "I am afraid my own view, conditioned by some years as a political correspondent, is much more cynical concerning the lengths to which human beings, of whatever era, will go in order to get, and keep, power.

His career ended with the trilogy of books following the lives of fictional members of his Stanford graduating class: Toward What Bright Glory?

He died of cardiac arrest on September 2, 1998, his 80th birthday, at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, California.