David Rayvern Allen
{{Short description|Cricket writer and broadcaster}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
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| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1938|02|05}}
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| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|2014|10|09|1938|02|05}}
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| nationality = British
| other_names =
| occupation = Cricket writer and historian, radio producer, presenter and speaker
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David Leonard Rayvern Allen (5 February 1938 – 9 October 2014)Michael Down [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/27/david-rayvern-allen "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.[http://www.enctoday.com/articles/colonial-4127-allen-branch.html "English-Speaking Union Hosts Lecture"]{{dead link|date=November 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} ENCToday.com March 20, 2007[http://www.cricketsociety.com/BOTY2011/winner.html "Book of the Year 2011 Winner Announced"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205163012/http://www.cricketsociety.com/BOTY2011/winner.html |date=2012-02-05 }} The Cricket Society[http://www.thecnj.com/review/061506/books061506_01.htm "Eleven Lords a-batting"] His radio productions won awards including the 1991 Prix Italia for Who Pays the Piper, a collaboration with Richard Stilgoe.[http://www.prixitalia.rai.it/2010/pdf/WINNERS_1949-2010.pdf Prix Italia winners 1949-2010] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131022124024/http://www.prixitalia.rai.it/2010/pdf/WINNERS_1949-2010.pdf |date=2013-10-22 }} RAI He died aged 76 in 2014.{{cite web|url=http://www.lords.org/news/2014/october/cricket-historian-rayvern-allen-dies/|title=Cricket historian Rayvern Allen dies|date=13 October 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".
Works
=Radio=
- [https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/hollywood/10248.shtml King Vidor profile] BBC Radio 1978 (presenter)
- [https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/hollywood/10202.shtml Billy Wilder profile] BBC Radio 1978 (interviewer)
- Who Could Ask for Anything More? A Celebration of Ira Gershwin BBC Radio 2 1996 (producer){{cite news | last = Staff writer | title = Who Could Ask for Anything More? BBC Radio 2, 7 December 1996 19.30 | url = http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e3c0e97e6ad74de58103813f344eeaed | work = Radio Times | issue = 3802 | page = 122 | date = 5 December 1996 | access-date = 5 March 2018}}
=With Richard Stilgoe=
- Used Notes
- Music on the Brain
- The Singing Wheelchair
- Hamburger Weekend (1984)[http://richardstilgoe.com/radio.html Richard Stilgoe website]
- Who Pays the Piper (1991)[http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/w/wh/who_pays_the_piper.html Who Pays the Piper] BBC Radio 2 listings 1991
=Other=
- Punches on the Page: A Boxing Anthology (1998) {{ISBN|978-1851589876}}
- Living with London (2012) Methuen {{ISBN|978-0413777393}} (with Nick Botting)
References
{{Reflist}}
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Category:People from Streatham
Category:People educated at Sir Walter St John's Grammar School For Boys