Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean
Alistair MacLean, late in life
Born	Alistair Stuart MacLean (1922-04-21)21 April 1922 Shettleston, Glasgow, Scotland
Died	2 February 1987(1987-02-02) (aged 64) Munich, West Germany
Resting place	Céligny, Switzerland
Nationality	Scottish
Other names	Ian Stuart
Education	Daviot local system Inverness Royal Academy Hillhead High School
Alma mater	University of Glasgow
Occupation(s)	Author and teacher
Years active	1955 to 1986
Employer(s)	Royal Navy (1941–1946) Gallowflat School (1946–1956)
Known for	Thrillers
Height	5 ft 7 in (170 cm)
Spouse(s)	Gisela Heinrichsen (1953–1972) Mary Marcelle Georgius (1972–1977)
Children	Three sons (one adopted) with Gisela

Alistair Stuart MacLean (Scottish Gaelic: Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. His works include The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare – all three were made into popular films. He also wrote two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time.

According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama. Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers loved his combination of hot macho action, wartime commando sagas, and exotic settings that included Greek Islands and Alaskan oil fields."

Biography

Early life

Alistair Maclean was descended from Clan Maclean.

MacLean was the son of a Church of Scotland minister and learned English as a second language after his mother tongue, Scottish Gaelic. He was born in Glasgow but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, ten miles south of Inverness. He was the third of four sons.

World War Two

He joined the Royal Navy in 1941, serving in World War II with the ranks of Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Leading Torpedo Operator. He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for anti-aircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland.

Beginning in 1943, he served on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. There he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist.

In 1944 he and Royalist served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean. During this time MacLean may have been injured in a gunnery practice accident.

In 1945, in the Far East theatre, MacLean and Royalist saw action escorting carrier groups in operations against Japanese targets in Burma, Malaya, and Sumatra. (MacLean's late-in-life claims that he was captured by the Japanese after blowing up bridges and tortured by having his teeth pulled out have been dismissed by both his son and his biographer as drunken ravings.) After the Japanese surrender, Royalist helped evacuate liberated POWs from Changi Prison in Singapore.

Post-war jobs

MacLean was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1946. He then studied English at the University of Glasgow, working at the post office and as a street sweeper. He graduated in 1953, and briefly worked as a hospital porter, and then worked as a school teacher at Gallow Flat School in Rutherglen.

HMS Ulysses

While a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the maritime story "Dileas". He old stories to the Daily Mirror and The Evening News. Ian Chapman, editor at the publishing company Collins asked him for a novel and he responded with HMS Ulysses, based on his own war experiences, as well as credited insight from his brother Ian, a master mariner. The book was written over three months.

Maclean later described his writing process:

I drew a cross square, lines down representing the characters, lines across representing chapters 1–15. Most of the characters died, in fact only one survived the book, but when I came to the end the graph looked somewhat lopsided, there were too many people dying in the first, fifth and tenth chapters so I had to rewrite it, giving an even dying space throughout. I suppose it sounds cold blooded and calculated, but that's the way I did it.

MacLean was paid with a large advance of $50,000 which resulted in headlines at the time. Collis were rewarded when the book sold a quarter of a million copies in hardback in England in the first six months of publication. It went on to sell millions more. Film rights were sold though a movie was never made. This money meant MacLean was able to devote himself to writing.

Later life

His next novel, The Guns of Navarone (1957), was about an attack on the fictitious island of Navarone (based on Melos). The book was very successful, selling over 400,000 copies in its first six months. MacLean followed it with South by Java Head (1958), based on Maclean's experiences in the South East Asia seas in World War Two, and The Last Frontier (1959), a thriller about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Film rights for Java Head were sold but no movie resulted. His next novels were Night Without End (1959) and Fear Is the Key (1961). The Last Frontier was turned into a movie, The Secret Ways (1961), which was not very successful while the film version of The Guns of Navarone (1961) was hugely successful.

In the early 1960s, MacLean published two novels under the pseudonym "Ian Stuart" in order to prove that the popularity of his books was due to their content rather than his name on the cover. These were The Dark Crusader (1961) and The Satan Bug (1962). They sold well, and MacLean made no attempt to change his writing style. He also continued to publish novels under his own name such as The Golden Rendezvous (1962) and Ice Station Zebra (1963).

"I'm not a novelist," he once said. "That's too pretentious a claim. I'm a storyteller, that's all. I'm a professional and a craftsman. I will make that claim for myself." Maclean also claimed he wrote very fast (35 days for a novel) because he disliked writing and the "sooner he finished the better". He never re-read a book after it was finished. His novels were notable for their lack of sex. "I like girls," said MacLean. "I just don't write them well. Everyone knows that men and women make love, laddie – there is no need to show it."

MacLean's books eventually sold so well that he moved to Switzerland as a tax exile. From 1963 to 1966, he took a hiatus from writing to run a hotel business in England, purchasing the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

During this time a film was made of The Satan Bug (1965). MacLean returned to writing with When Eight Bells Toll (1966).

Screenwriting

Producer Elliot Kastner approached MacLean looking for film scripts which prompted MacLean to write Where Eagles Dare. In July 1966 Kastner and his producing partner Jerry Gershwin had purchased five screenplays from MacLean: Where Eagles Dare, When Eight Bells Toll, and three other unnamed ones. (Kastner made four MacLean movies.) MacLean also wrote a novel for Where Eagles Dare which was published in 1967. The book was a best seller and the 1968 film version was a huge hit. "MacLean is a natural storyteller," said Kastner. "He is a master of adventure. All his books are conceived in cinematic terms. They hardly need to be adapted for the screen; when you read them, the screen is in front of your mind." MacLean wrote a sequel to Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone (1968). A film version was announced in 1967 but did not result for another decade. The same year saw the release of an expensive film based on Ice Station Zebra (1968).

Maclean wrote a thriller about narcotics, Puppet on a Chain (1969), and Caravan to Vaccarès (1970). These books all began as screenplays for Kastner. MacLean then wrote Bear Island (1971), the last of his first person narratives. Kastner produced a film version of When Eight Bells Toll (1971) and Fear Is the Key (1972); another producer made Puppet on a Chain (1971). Neither performed particularly strongly at the box office. This delayed plans announced in 1972 for MacLean's then-wife Marcelle to produce three films based on his books. One of these proposed films was The Way to Dusty Death, which was to star Jackie Stewart. It ended up being a 1973 novel and a 1995 film.

Geoffrey Reeve directed a film of Caravan to Vaccarès (1974). By 1973 MacLean had sold over 24 million novels. "I am not a writer," he said in 1972. "I am a businessman. My business is writing." MacLean had spent a number of years focusing on screenplays but disliked it and decided to return to being predominantly a novel writer. "Hollywood destroys writers," he said. He wrote a biography of James Cook which was published in 1972. He wrote Breakheart Pass (1974), Circus (1975), The Golden Gate (1976), Seawitch (1977), Goodbye California (1979) and Athabasca (1980).

"I read a lot, I travel some," he said in 1975. "But mostly what I don't know I invent." In 1978 MacLean said he "just can't understand" why people bought his novels. "It's not as if I write that well: I do feel my English isn't very good. In fact, I'd rather write in Gaelic or Spanish than English." He said his stories tended to pit "character against character as a kind of intellectual chess game" and that he found writing "boring" and "lonely" but "I guess it all boils down to that rather awful philosophy of take the money and run."

"I am just a journeyman," he said. "I blunder along from one book to the next always hopeful that one day I will write something really good."

Films were still being made out of his novels including Breakheart Pass (1975) (from Kastner), Golden Rendezvous (1977), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), and Bear Island (1979) but none did very well.

Maclean decided to focus on American television. He wrote a 120-page novella called Air Force One is Down which was turned down by NBC (it would be filmed in 2012). Maclean then pitched six new ideas to networks, each with a 25–30 page treatment. The Hostage Tower was approved by CBS and aired in 1980.

Later novels

Maclean's later works include River of Death (1981) (filmed in 1989), Partisans (1982), Floodgate (1983), and San Andreas (1984). Often these novels were worked on by ghost writers, with MacLean providing only the outline. His last novel was Santorini (1986), published after his death. His estate left behind several outlines. One of them was filmed as Death Train (1993).

MacLean's later books were not as well received as the earlier publications and, in an attempt to keep his stories in keeping with the time, he sometimes lapsed into unduly improbable plots. He also struggled constantly with alcoholism, which eventually brought about his death in Munich on 2 February 1987. He died of a stroke. According to one obituary, "A master of nail-chewing suspense, MacLean met an appropriately mysterious death: when he died in the Bavarian capital after a brief illness, no one, including the British Embassy, knew what he was doing there."

He is buried a few yards from Richard Burton in Céligny, Switzerland. He was married twice and had three sons by his first wife, Lachlan, Michael and Alistair. He married for a second time in 1972 but it did not last.

His niece Shona MacLean (also published under S.G. Maclean) is a writer and historical novelist.

MacLean was awarded a Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow in 1983.

Reception

Algis Budrys described MacLean's writing style as "hit 'em with everything but the kitchen sink, then give 'em the sink, and when they raise their heads, drop the plumber on 'em".

List of works

Novels

Year	Title	Notes	High NYT	Wks NYT
1955	HMS Ulysses		#8	17
1957	The Guns of Navarone		#12	3
1958	South by Java Head		—	—
1959	The Last Frontier	in the US The Secret Ways	—	—
1959	Night Without End		#13	2
1961	Fear Is the Key		—	—
1961	The Dark Crusader	in the US The Black Shrike (as Ian Stuart)	—	—
1962	The Golden Rendezvous		#13	8
1962	The Satan Bug	as Ian Stuart	#16	1
1962	All About Lawrence of Arabia	Non-fiction
1963	Ice Station Zebra		#10	1
1966	When Eight Bells Toll		—	—
1967	Where Eagles Dare	He also wrote the screenplay.	#8	8
1968	Force 10 From Navarone		#4	18
1969	Puppet on a Chain	Also wrote screenplay	#5	17
1970	Caravan to Vaccarès		#6	12
1971	Bear Island		#5	14
1972	Alistair MacLean Introduces Scotland	Non-fiction, edited by Alastair Dunnett
1972	Captain Cook	Non-fiction
1973	The Way to Dusty Death		—	—
1974	Breakheart Pass		—	—
1975	Circus		#5	12
1976	The Golden Gate		#8	2
1977	Seawitch		#15	1
1978	Goodbye California		#10	9
1980	Athabasca		#3	—
1981	River of Death		—	—
1982	Partisans		#15	1
1983	Floodgate		#12	3
1984	San Andreas		—	—
1985	The Lonely Sea	Collection of short stories (2 stories added in 2009)	—	—
1986	Santorini		#13	2

Source for The New York Times Best Seller list: "Adult New York Times Best Seller Listings". Hawes Publications. Retrieved 30 August 2014. Figures are for the Adult Hardcover Fiction lists, 1956 through 1987: highest position reached and total number of weeks on list. A "—" indicates it did not make the list. Note that the Times list consisted of a Top 10 from 1963 through 1976, but a Top 15 or 16 before and after; thus, books during that middle period may have had longer stays relative to the others.

A collection of MacLean's fiction works from 1955 to 1971, published by Heron Books (London) in the mid-1970s

UNACO books by other authors

Year	Title	Author, using MacLean's notes
1980	Hostage Tower	John Denis
1981	Air Force One is Down	John Denis
1989	Death Train	Alastair MacNeill
1989	Night Watch	Alastair MacNeill
1990	Red Alert	Alastair MacNeill
1991	Time of the Assassins	Alastair MacNeill
1992	Dead Halt	Alastair MacNeill
1993	Code Breaker	Alastair MacNeill
1995	Rendezvous	Alastair MacNeill
1997	Prime Target	Hugh Miller
1998	Borrowed Time	Hugh Miller

Golden Girl series by other authors

Year	Title	Notes
1992	Golden Girl	by Simon Gandolfi
1993	Golden Web	by Simon Gandolfi
1994	Golden Vengeance	by Simon Gandolfi

Films with screenplay contribution

Year	Title	Notes
1968	Where Eagles Dare	book author/screenplay
1970	Puppet on a Chain	book author/screenplay
1971	When Eight Bells Toll	book author/screenplay
1975	Breakheart Pass	book author/screenplay

Other films

Year	Title	Notes
1961	The Secret Ways	book author
1961	The Guns of Navarone	book author
1965	The Satan Bug	book author
1968	Ice Station Zebra	book author
1972	Fear Is the Key	book author
1974	Caravan to Vaccares	book author
1977	Golden Rendezvous	book author
1978	Force 10 from Navarone	book author
1979	Bear Island	book author
1980	The Hostage Tower	story
1989	River of Death	book author
1993	Death Train	story
1995	The Way to Dusty Death	book author
1995	Night Watch	story

Allegedly written by Alistair MacLean

Year	Title	Notes
1962	Bloody borderland	by Tadeusz Kostecki in 1946 as Droga powrotna Płowego Jima

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Petri Liukkonen. "Alistair MacLean". Books and Writers.
• J. Kingston Pierce (1 October 2013). "Fit to Thrill: Alistair MacLean Deserves to Be Read Again". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
• Edwin McDowell (3 February 1987). "Alastair MacLean Dies; Books Sold In Millions". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
• "Bestselling British Author Alistair MacLean Dead At 64". Ocala Star-Banner. 3 February 1987. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
• Lee, Robert A. Alistair MacLean: The Key is Fear. Borgo Press, 1976. ISBN 0-89370-203-X.
• Webster, Jack. Alistair MacLean: A Life. Chapmans Publishers, 1991. ISBN 1-85592-519-2. (Alternative title: Alistair MacLean: A Biography of a Master Storyteller.)
• "Maclean, Alistair." Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Liam Rodger and Joan Bakewell. London: Chambers Harrap, 2011.

External links

• Alistair MacLean at IMDb
• Harper dares with Alistair MacLean reissue, 2009.09.11

See also

• Hammond Innes