English writer and journalist, Allan Jenkins (b. 1954), was in Plymouth children’s homes and foster care as a child. He spent the longest period (from age five) with foster parents Lilian and Dudley Drabble, in rural Devon. Here he was renamed Peter Drabble and encouraged to garden.

Allan was in foster care with the Drabbles with his brother, Chris, but both boys were rejected by their foster parents as teenagers. Allan went to university in his thirties, and became a journalist at the age of 36. By 2006 he was the editor of the Observer Magazine. In 2017 Allen published his memoir, Plot 29, and followed this with a meditation, Morning, in 2018. He is currently editor of Observer Food Monthly.