Michael Allen (OW 1955)

21 September 1936 – 28 August 2023

The Waynflete Office has been informed by his son Peter of the death of Michael John Allen at the age of 86. We send our condolences to Peter and Michael’s other family and friends.

We are most grateful for the legacy gift Michael left to Magdalen College School and thank his son Jerry for sharing these words about his father:

After leaving school, Dad deferred his entry to Magdalen College so as to complete his National Service, for which he opted to enlist in the Royal Navy.

During his service he served in communications, specialising a ‘Coder’. This work involved monitoring of Soviet military transmissions, in particular missile batteries and for which he was required to learn basic Russian. Part of his training took place at Bletchley Park, where he mentioned that one of his instructors had been one of the famous wartime codebreakers (I believe this was Bill Tutte).

One particular occasion he recalled was when his unit was tracking one such missile battery and he was relaying their targeting transmissions to his commander when they realised that it was their own location that was being targeted! A little ‘friendly’ reminder from the Soviets that they knew exactly what was going on…!

It was during his time in the Navy that he met our mother, Margaret Jones. She was a regular in the signals branch of the WRNS and they met at a social event being held at the shore base where they were both posted.

After completing his National Service, Dad returned to Oxford and took up his place at Magdalen College where he completed his degree in history, graduating in 1961.

Later that year he and our mother married and moved to Newcastle upon Tyne where he took up a post with Hallmark Cards as a Systems Analyst, which involved working with some of the early computer systems. It was in Newcastle that my brother and I were born at the family home.

Shortly after Pete was born, we relocated to Tring in Hertfordshire. By this time Dad was working for Procter & Gamble and was involved with the team that developed Fairy Liquid. Part of his responsibilities was procuring supplies for the development team and he recalled getting ‘told off’ by his boss due to the large quantities of methylated spirits he kept ordering – this was the only substance that would clean the machines during the trials to get the formula right!

The following year we moved again to Newbury in Berkshire. After working for a number of years for the P&O shipping line, he decided to set up his own management consultancy firm MJ Allen & Associates. During his time as his own boss, he joined the Newbury Chamber of Commerce, being elected as President (around 1980 I believe). A major client was the NHS and I remember he was often working at Guildford Hospital.

Throughout our childhood we had enjoyed many holidays in Wales and after his retirement in his late 50s Mum and Dad moved to an old smithy in the small community of Talsarn, not far from Aberaeron in the old county of Dyfed (now Ceredigion), where they spent several happy years until finally relocating to their last home in Wisbech – recognising that a remote hilltop location may not have been the best option in their later years!

Mum passed away in 2006 and Dad continued to live in the home they’d loved until his death last year.