This is an accepted version of this page Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey (24 October 1908 – 4 February 1986) was a West Indian writer, socialist activist, newspaper editor and politician of the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.

She is best known for her first novel, The Orchid House (1953), based on her own early life, which in 1991 was turned into a Channel 4 television miniseries of the same name in the United Kingdom.

"[2] Her earliest ancestor in the West Indies was Lieutenant General William Byam, a Royalist officer who in 1644 defended Bridgwater in Somerset against a parliamentary force.

[3] Phyllis Shand married Robert Allfrey, an English Oxford engineer, and they had five children, including their adopted sons, Robbie and David, from a Carib reservation.

In 1941 Allfrey established a connection with Tribune, the newspaper of the left wing of the British Labour Party, where from 1941 to 1944 her reviews, poems and short stories appeared regularly alongside those of regular contributors such as Naomi Mitchison, Stevie Smith, Julian Symons, Elizabeth Taylor, Inez Holden and George Orwell, the latter becoming its literary editor in 1943.