Scottish aristocrat who worked for the Rolling Stones
Born: July 6, 1941;
Died: April 20, 2017
THE Hon Fiona Mary Allen (nee Fraser), who has died in Florence aged 75, was a member of the famous Lovat Fraser family, one of the most distinguished families in Scotland, and the daughter of Lord Lovat, the famous British Commando during the Second World War
Over the years, Mrs Allen had worked in a number of varied and glamorous jobs, including organising foreign tours for the Rolling Stones. She also worked for a British pseudo-military organisation that operated in Tunisia.
Her mother was of the Delves Broughton family who were members of the notorious Happy Valley set, the group of British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the Wanjohi Valley in colonial Kenya and Uganda in the 1920s until the 1940s.
She was born at Beaufort Castle in Inverness-shire where she was brought up in the 1950s spending happy summers at Morar on the west coast.
She was educated in the south but throughout her youth her father was away on war service. When he led his regiment on to Sword Beach at the D-Day landings in Normandy, he insisted that his men were led into battle by his personal piper, Bill Millin.
After school, Mrs Allen did a secretarial course in London and then worked as secretary and administrative officer in a pseudo military organisation near London’s Sloane Square for Colonel Jim Johnstone, who had served with the SAS. There, amongst many other duties, she was in charge of travel arrangements and decoding messages.
Mrs Allen then spent two years working for the Rolling Stones – again as their travel manager principally organising their foreign tours. She told friends that she did not much care for the Stones' girlfriends but was always very discreet and never gossiped about their lives.
Mrs Allen experienced particular heartache when two of brothers (Simon and Andrew) both died in accidents in 1994 and her father the following year - Andrew Fraser was killed by a buffalo while on safari in Tanzania and, within a week, Simon died from a heart attack.
In 1994 the family sold Beaufort to the Stagecoach director Anne Gloag for a reported £3.5million to meet inheritance taxes. Most of the rest of the 19,500-acre estate, the Frasers' heartland for more than 500 years, was sold in a number of lots, with purchasers coming from the immediate locality and from further afield, including Belgium, Holland, and Sweden. In 1990, financial difficulties had forced the family to sell the fishing on the Beauly River, a river which had been associated with their forbears since the 14th century, and the 33,000-acre Brauien Estate.
Mrs Allen married Robin Allen, a distinguished writer, journalist and the Gulf correspondent of the Financial Times in 1982.
She proved a most resourceful and supportive wife throughout Mr Allen’s time in the Middle East – an area she grew to greatly love. Her husband’s job required a broad knowledge of the area and the changing complexities of the oil industry – the price of oil had trebled and through Mr Allen’s influential connections his despatches to the FT were of significant importance – especially during the coup in Qatar in 1996.
The Allens were popular members of the ex-pat community in Dubai and Mrs Allen worked in the administration offices of the Dubai Dry Docks.
They spent their retirement in Florence and Mrs Allen provided strong support when her husband was diagnosed with two serious attacks of cancer.
Mrs Allen’s first cousin, Major General Jeremy Phipps who formerly served with the SAS, remembered Mrs Allen with a special warmth when he spoke to The Herald: “We grew up together in Inverness-shire and were very close. Fiona throughout her life was proud of her Fraser ancestry and hugely loyal to the clan and Scotland. She returned every summer to visit the family and see old friends – Fiona loved travelling and preserved a wonderful curiosity about everything all her life.
“She was, like all the Frasers, courageous and adventurous. I especially remember her loyalty to her friends and her deep affection for the people of Beauly. Fiona was special.”
Robin Allen died in 2011 and Mrs Allen is survived by their son and daughter, Jonathan and Josephine.
ALASDAIR STEVEN
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here