William Edward David Allen OBE (6 January 1901 – 18 September 1973) was a British scholar, Foreign Service officer, fascist politician and businessman, best known as a historian of the South Caucasus—notably Georgia.
Born into, on his father's side, an Ulster-Scots family in London and brought up in Hertfordshire, he was educated at Eton College (1914–1918), where he began to learn Russian and Turkish.
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".
[3] He also met and recorded the activities of other Special Operations Executive (SOE) comrades Tony Simonds and Billy Maclean, as remarkable for their informality and eccentricities as their soldierly demeanour.
John Erickson wrote that they (particularly the second volume) are examples of skilful exploitation of contemporary sources, and even today retain considerable value, including the elucidation of terrain factors.