Allegory was the last thing in literature that I thought about, mainly because it meant reading books on reading lists. I stictched myself up at college by picking the thinnest book on the essay list to write about, not realising that allegories tend to the shortish.

I saw a film once about a woman arrested by the literature police, for writing children's stories that were inferred to be allegorical critiques of the regime. Regimes must be pretty insecure to think that a book can threaten them but of course that wasn't the point, they were getting her because that's what they're for.