ALLEN, Charles 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born 1940, in Cawnpore (now Kanpur), Uttar Pradesh, India.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England and Somerset, England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 161 William St., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10038.

CAREER:

Traveler, writer, and historian.

WRITINGS:

Plain Tales from the Raj (radio series), British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Four, 1974.

(Editor, with Michael Mason) Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century, André Deutsch (London, England), 1975, reprinted, 2000.

Raj: A Scrapbook of British India, 1877-1947, André Deutsch (London, England), 1977.

(Editor, with Helen Fry) Tales from the Dark Continent, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1979, reprinted, 1994.

A Mountain in Tibet: The Search for Mount Kailas and the Sources of the Great Rivers of India, André Deutsch (London, England), 1982.

(Editor, with Michael Mason) Tales from the South China Seas: Images of the British in South-East Asia in the Twentieth Century, André Deutsch and British Broadcasting Corporation (London, England), 1983.

(With Sharada Dwivedi) Lives of the Indian Princes, Century Publishers (London, England), 1984.

A Glimpse of the Burning Plain: Leaves from the Indian Journals of Charlotte Canning, Michael Joseph (London, England), 1986.

Kipling's Kingdom: Twenty-five of Rudyard Kipling's Best Indian Stories—Known and Unknown, Michael Joseph (London, England), 1987.

The Savage Wars of Peace: Soldiers' Voices, 1945-1989, Michael Joseph (London, England), 1990.

Thunder & Lightning: The RAF in the Gulf: Personal Experiences of War, Her Majesty's Stationery Office (London, England), 1991.

The Search for Shangri-La: A Journey into Tibetan History, Little, Brown (London, England), 1999.

Soldier Sahibs: The Daring Adventurers Who Tamed India's Northwest Frontier, Carroll & Graf Publishers (New York, NY), 2001.

The Buddha and the Sahibs: The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion, John Murray (London, England), 2002, published as The Search for the Buddha: The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion, Carroll & Graf Publishers (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles Allen is a traveler, writer, and historian specializing in South Asian affairs and British imperial history. A prolific author and, as Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd noted in the Spectator, "a skilful and unobtrusive editor," Allen has published books on numerous subjects from the experiences of the British in India to tales of Himalayan exploration to the birth of Buddhism in the West. Of his many published works, he is perhaps best known for one of his first professional endeavors, an oral history produced for British Broadcasting Corporation Radio and later published as three books, Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the TwentiethCentury, Tales from the Dark Continent, and Tales from the South China Seas: Images of the British in South-East Asia in the Twentieth Century.

For his radio documentary Allen, the son of a political officer on India's northeast frontier, invited a wide range of British military personnel and civilians in India, as well as a small number of Indians and Eurasians, to, as critic Benny Green described it in the Spectator, "simply … talk into tape recorders." Green acknowledged the possible danger of such an unstructured approach—he warned that Allen's method could be "utterly deadly"—but conceded that the "great cunning and care" Allen demonstrated in his editing and arranging of the interviews rendered the outcome "an unqualified triumph." The publication of Plain Tales from the Raj was equally well received; a contributor to Choice called it "the best study to date of British society in twentieth-century India." Similarly, Tales from the Dark Continent was hailed by a Choice reviewer as "an invaluable and powerful historical account," although Spectator critic Montgomery-Massingberd pointed out that the book includes a few misspelled names and a minor factual error.

Among Allen's other publications are Raj: A Scrapbook of British India, 1877-1947, which Geographical Journal contributor Dorothy Middleton praised as a "well-informed" if somewhat moderated collection of photographs, letters, advertisements, and other remnants (Middleton commented that "Work was more challenging, leisure more fun and hardship less dire than Mr. Allen allows"); A Glimpse of the Burning Plain: Leaves from the Indian Journals of Charlotte Canning, which interweaves entries from the journals of the young wife of the governor-general of India in the mid-nineteenth century with Allen's narrative in what British Book News contributor Geoffrey Trease called a "beautifully produced volume"; A Mountain in Tibet: The Search for Mount Kailas and the Sources of the Great Rivers of India, which Paul Stuewe enthusiastically described in Quill & Quire as "a ripping yarn of exploration and adventure"; Soldier Sahibs: The Daring Adventurers Who Tamed India's Northwest Frontier, criticized in Publishers Weekly for its "unapologetically imperialist perspective" and declared "tough going" for readers unfamiliar with the subject; and The Search for the Buddha: The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion, praised by a Kirkus Reviews contributor as "a first-rate account" of the research that introduced Buddhism to the West, that is "well written, well researched," and, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "deeply appealing."

Clearly, much of Allen's canon focuses on South Asia, and although he often travels to research his subjects, he admits to a certain difficulty with the required travel; in an interview with the Guardian's John Cunningham he confided, "I'm an awful traveller. I'm constantly sick; I can't stand Indian food and I've lost part of one lung."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

British Book News, July, 1986, Geoffrey Trease, review of A Glimpse of the Burning Plain: Leaves from the Indian Journals of Charlotte Canning, p. 438.

Choice, December, 1976, review of Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century, p.1346; September, 1980, review of Tales from the Dark Continent, p. 140.

Geographical Journal, July, 1978, Dorothy Middleton, review of Raj: A Scrapbook of British India, 1877-1947, pp. 348-349.

Guardian, February 12, 2000, John Cunningham, "In Search of Paradise Lost: A Life in Writing."

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2003, review of The Search for the Buddha: The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion, p. 195.

Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2001, review of Soldier Sahibs: The Daring Adventurers Who Tamed India's Northwest Frontier, p. 74; March 17, 2003, review of The Search for the Buddha, p. 71.

Quill & Quire, March, 1983, Paul Stuewe, review of A Mountain in Tibet: The Search for Mount Kailas and the Sources of the Great Rivers in India, p. 69.

Spectator, January 21, 1978, Benny Green, "Plain Tales," review of Raj, p. 24; October 20, 1979, Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, "Africa Hands," review of Tales from the Dark Continent, pp. 21-22.*