William Edward David Allen (January 6, 1901 - September 18, 1973) was an Ireland-born English scholar, Foreign Service officer, politician and businessman, best known as a historian of South Caucasus.
Born in Waterford, Ireland, he was educated at Eton College. He was a military correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the Rif war (1925). WED Allen served as the Unionist MP for West Belfast from 1929 to 1931 when he defected to join Sir Oswald Mosley's New Party. He was a close friend of Mosley and helped him to pursue his Fascist ambitions from behind the scenes, by supporting him financially and by contributing mainly anonymous articles to The Blackshirt, including "The Letters of Lucifer". WED Allen also wrote a book BUF, Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (1934) under the pen name of James Drennan. It has frequently been reported that he was an MI5 informant but this now appears to be false[1].
In the pre-World War II years, he traveled a lot and conducted extensive research on the history of the peoples of the Caucasus and Anatolia. In 1930, along with Sir Oliver Wardrop, he founded the Georgian Historic Society which published its own journal Georgica dedicated to the Kartvelian studies.
William ED Allen was a Foreign Service officer from 1943 until he stepped down and returned to his native Ulster in 1949. Together with his two younger brothers, he ran David Allens, a major bill-posting company.
He was married: (1) from 1922 to 1932, to Lady Phyllis Edith Allen (nee King) (1897-1947), daughter of Lionel Fortescue King, 3rd Earl of Lovelace (1865-1929)[2] (2) from 1932 to 1939, to Paula Gellibrand (1898-1986), once Cecil Beaton's favourite model and formerly the wife of the Marquis de Casa Maury; and (3) from 1943, to Nathalie Maximovna