Scottish Authors > Alistair MacLean Novelist 1922-1987

MacLean was born in Glasgow in 1922. A son of the manse, he spent his early years in Daviot near Inverness. Educated at Hillhead High School, Glasgow, he worked in a shipping office before joining the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. He served on the Russian convoys, in the Aegean and the Far East, and his experiences in the navy provided the background for his early novels.

After the war MacLean attended Glasgow University, graduating in 1947. He began teaching English in Gallowflat School, Rutherglen and began writing short stories, some of which were published in Blackwood's magazine. At the age of 32 he entered a short story competition in The Glasgow herald, which he won with a story entitled The Dileas receiving a prize of GBP 100.

Ian Chapman, an editor with Collins, was so impressed by the story he asked MacLean to attempt a novel. He received the manuscript of HMS Ulysses ten weeks later. The novel drew heavily on the author's experiences of the Russian convoys and became one of the most successful British novels of all time, selling 250,000 hardback copies within six months. This success was followed by Guns of Navarone, and South by Java Head, both of which later became films, and MacLean's reputation was established. He was a master of pace, often at the expense of characterisation, keeping the action moving so that the reader had no time to stop and think.

MacLean's relationship with his publisher, Collins, was not always an easy one, and to prove that it was not his name alone that was selling his books, he produced in 1960 Dark crusader under the pseudonym of Ian Stuart, followed by Satan bug in 1961 which became a successful film. In the mid 1960s Elliot Kastner, a film producer/director, persuaded MacLean to turn his hand to screenplays and this resulted in Where eagles dare, which had great success as a film.

In all, MacLean produced fourteen screenplays including Breakheart Pass and Heritage Tower, some of which were subsequently turned into novels, although some critics felt that the screenplay/novels lacked the power of his early work. Throughout his career he produced twenty seven books, mainly adventure stories, but he also wrote a biography of Captain Cook in 1972.

In his later years his personal life became increasingly shambolic, and his addicition to alcohol undermined his health. Jack Webster, in his biography of MacLean, felt that:

... if escape was a prime characterstic of his fiction it was no less a feature of his own life. He was searching for greater meaning and fulfilment while running away from the chances of finding it.

Alistair MacLean died in February 1987 in Munich and was buried in Celigny, Switzerland. It has been said that MacLean wrote to a formula:

A hero, a band of men, hostile climate, a ruthless enemy and, as often as not, a Judas figure who almost upsets the mission.

If it was a formula, it was an extremely successful one, eighteen of his books selling over a million copies.

Robert Craig

Search Scotland's Culture for more by & about this author. Link will open in a new window.