Short answers, pulled from the story.
Allen Lane was a British publisher born in Bristol on the 21st of September 1902. He founded Penguin Books in 1935, together with his brothers Richard and John Lane, bringing affordable quality paperbacks to a mass audience. He died on the 7th of July 1970 at Northwood, Middlesex.
The idea came to Lane in 1934 at Exeter St Davids station, where he found himself with nothing worth reading while returning from a visit to Agatha Christie. He conceived of cheap paperback editions of quality literature, sold cheaply enough to be dispensed from a vending machine. The first such machine, called the "Penguincubator", was installed outside Henderson's in Charing Cross Road.
Lane joined the Bodley Head in 1919 as an apprentice to his uncle, the company's founder John Lane. After his uncle's death, he became managing editor in 1925. He and his family changed their surname from Williams to Lane to keep the firm within the family.
Under Lane's direction, Penguin Books launched Pelican Books for non-fiction in 1937, Puffin Books in 1940, and the Penguin Classics series in 1945. Lane also started a hardback imprint under his own name, Allen Lane, in 1967.
Lane made the deliberate decision to publish an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover as a direct test of the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The resulting trial became a landmark case in British publishing history and free expression.
In 1965, chief editor Tony Godwin and the board of directors attempted to remove Lane from Penguin. Lane responded by stealing and burning the entire print run of Massacre, a book by French cartoonist Sine, then dismissed Godwin and retained control. He was forced to retire shortly afterward after being diagnosed with bowel cancer.