David Rayvern Allen 1938-2014 Shafto Gerald Strachan Pawle 1914-1977

posted by John Winn

The death of David Rayvern Allen has been announced. Radio producer, prolific cricket author, historian, archivist and musician, David died last week after a long illness during which he continued to contribute to the MCC Archive Project. Several of his books are on my shelves including the authorised biography of John Arlott and Cricket on the Air, a selection from fifty years of radio broadcasts.

By coincidence just the day before David died, I was reading extracts from his book, 'Cricket's Silver Lining', an anthology of cricket writings. One essay I particularly enjoyed was by Gerald Pawle, one time cricket writer on The Yorkshire Post. Pawle was brought up in Hertfordshire but boarded at St Peter's York until his father, a stockbroker was ruined by the Clarence Hatry scandal (and it is worth putting that fraudster's name in a search engine). The dramatic change in the Pawle family circumstances caused Gerald to apply to the YP for a job and he was engaged for the sum of £1 a week. His account of his time on the paper shows just how poor cricket coverage has become for Pawle's job was to essentially shadow Yorkshire II, an assignment which took him to places as disparate as Brighouse, Walsall, Redcar and Skegness. What wouldn't we give for that sort of coverage now?

After an interesting wartime career in the Navy, his book The Secret War 1939 to 45 is still available, Pawle was persuaded to return to cricket writing by EW Swanton. One suspects that EW was a hard man to refuse, for despite living in Cornwall and having married the daughter of a Marquess, a week after EW's 'phone call Pawle found himself at Taunton covering Somerset v Yorkshire. Gerald also wrote for The Sunday Times, was author of  a biography of England cricketer Bob Wyatt,  an England squash international and a playing member of MCC. He died in 1991 aged 77 and I'd never heard of him before reading Rayvern Allen's book. I was in touch with Tony Hutton yesterday and he recommends another of Allen's books, 'Cricket:An Illustrated History', 'one of the best cricket books I have ever seen' is Tony's opinion. Praise indeed and copies are available on Amazon.