Maud Allan

Maud Allan was a Canadian-born dancer and performer famed for her sensual Vision of Salomé. In 1918 she brought a libel case against the conspiracy theorist Noel Pemberton Billing, but the trial turned into a sensational attack on her sexuality, reputation and alleged wartime disloyalty.

Maud Allan was born in Toronto and died in Los Angeles. Allan’s London success rested on a modern-dance interpretation of Salome that made her internationally famous but also a target for moral campaigners; the 1918 libel trial against Noel Pemberton Billing effectively destroyed her British career.

In Pat Barker’s The Eye in the Door, Maud Allan’s libel action against Billing supplies the novel’s historical backdrop, linking private fear to a wider culture of moral panic.