Masterstrokes

15 February 1930 – 24 February 2007

Allen John Millington Synge, born in Buckinghamshire and schooled at Millfield in Somerset, came from the same Anglo-Irish family as the playwright John M. Synge, his full name marking family pride in the connection. Before Millfield, he experienced an apparently hilarious wartime interlude of evacuation in Arizona to his American great-aunt, Eufrasia Tucker. After it, and national service, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, like his distinguished relative. There, he studied history, and met and later married Olive Weir, a strikingly beautiful Ulster girl; they had a daughter and two sons. Himself a writer, editor, publisher and original person, Allen was one of that talented tribe of ad…