Saturday 27 August 2022

Audrey Allis and "The Cyclist" magazine

 Some letters for sale on ebay recently caught my eye. They were to Audrey Allis from some servicemen and addressed to contact corner at "The Bicycle" magazine.

It seems that Audrey was a pen-friend to a large number of serviceman interested in cycling during WW2 and after the war she organised a large gathering or gatherings of those friends.

She was mentioned in the Daily Mirror of 6 April 1946 as the hostess of the "contact corner" party at Bayswater, and a photograph was included. A note about the party in "The cyclist" of June 1946 says that her uncle was the writer "Ragged Staff" aka Reginald Burgess "Rex" Coley who wrote a great many articles and some books on cycling. Rex was born in Walsall in 1898 and married Annie Palmer in 1929.

Who was Audrey? There are few candidates but after the party mentioned she seems to have disappeared with no references back to the magazine.

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