Painter, born in London, who became famous for his simple and direct pictures of East End streets. Many of these depicted scenes he had known as a child. Allin was a fine natural draughtsman who joined prison art classes while serving a sentence for theft, and continued to work in the evenings later when employed as a lorry driver. In the late 1960s began showing at the Portal Gallery and in the 1970s won fame on the continent, in 1979 gaining the Prix Suisse Peinture Naïve award. In 1974 his book Say Goodbye was published, with an accompanying text by the playwright Arnold Wesker, who had shared a similar childhood. A second book, Circus Life, followed after the artist spent two years with Gerry Cottle’s circus.