1. Allison (Drummond). The Yellow Night; poems 1940-41-42-43. Portrait frontispiece and
decorations by David Haughton. The Fortune Press, 1944. First Edition. Buckram a little
bumped and marked, otherwise a very nice copy. With a photographic portrait of the
author mounted on the front pastedown and a slip bearing his autograph inscription “With
love from Drummond Allison” on the front free end-paper. With the dated ownership
signature of Michael Meyer on the front free end-paper. £150

Drummond Allison was killed in action in Italy. He contributed to Cherwell, the Oxford
university literary magazine, during Meyer’s editorship and the two were introduced by
Sidney Keyes. In his memoirs, Not Prince Hamlet, Secker & Warburg, 1989, Meyer describes
him as “lean and fresh-faced, rather immature, outgoing, boyish and pleasantly garrulous,
with a high, eager voice, and a passion for cricket”. He was also one of the Eight Oxford
Poets, the anthology edited by Meyer and Keyes published in 1941. Meyer lost many of his
best friends in quick succession, including three of the Oxford eight, Sidney Keyes and Keith
Douglas being the other two.

(John) Drummond Allison (1921 – 2 December 1943) was an English war poet of the Second World War.
He was born in Caterham, Surrey, and educated at Bishop's Stortford College and at Queen's College, Oxford. After Sandhurst training, he became an intelligence officer in the East Surrey Regiment. He served in North Africa and Italy, where he was killed in action fighting on the Garigliano. Lieutenant Allison lies in the Minturno War Cemetery.[1]