ALISTAIR
MACLEAN

Biography

Alistair Stuart MacLean was born in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, April 21, 1922 and he was the son of a Scottish Minister. He was raised in the Scottish Highlands in Daviot near Inverness. He attended school at Hillhead High School in Glasgow. In 1941, at the age of 18, he joined the Royal Navy.

During World War II he spent 2 and a half years aboard a cruiser as a torpedo man. After the war, he attended Glasgow University where he graduated in 1953 with an English Honors Degree. After graduation he worked as a schoolteacher and taught English and History at Gallowflat Secondary School in Glasgow. He also published a few short stories. One of his short stories, The Dileas, won a Glasgow Herald competition in 1954 and a suggestion from a publisher, William Collins, that he should try writing a book. His years on the cruiser during World War II were the background for his first book, HMS Ulysses, and his experiences with Russian convoys. This book was published in 1955 and instantly became a big seller and the first in a long list of best sellers.

In 1960 Alistair MacLean wrote, Dark Crusader, and in 1961 wrote, Satan Bug, using a pseudonym of Ian Stuart. In 1983 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature from Glasgow University.

Several screenplays were written by Alistair MacLean and several audio books were made of his books.

Alistair MacLean died in Munich, Germany in February 2, 1987 and was buried Celigny, Switzerland. In his final years he was destroyed by alcoholism. When he died in 1987, he left behind several outlines for new books. The outlines were derived in 1977 as a series of film outlines. There were 8 outlines dealing with the activities of 5 members of a fictional anti-crime organization that was part of the United Nations. Author John Denis wrote the first 2 books in the series. Author Alastair MacNeill has written 6 books. These books are included in the list of "Book Outlines by Other Authors".

Alistair MacLean's address is given as, c/o William Collins Sons and Company Ltd., 14 St. James's Place, London SW1A 1PS, England.

The following information was taken from "Contemporary Authors - New Revision Series, Volume 28" and gives additional insight into Alistair MacLean and his writing.

Alistair MacLean once claimed that he wrote fast, taking only thirty-five days to complete a novel, because he disliked writing and didn't want to spend much time at it. He also claimed never to re-read his work once it was finished and to never read reviews of his books. According to the New York Post, MacLean once explained: "I'm not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There's no art in what I do, no mystique." Despite his disclaimers, MacLean's many adventure novels sold over 30 million copies and were translated into a score of languages. He was, Edwin McDowell noted in the New York Times, "one of the biggest-selling adventure writers in the world."

MacLean's first success as a writer came while he was teaching school in his native Glasgow, Scotland, in the mid-1950's. A local newspaper, the Glasgow Herald, sponsored a story contest and MacLean's entry about a fishing family in the West Highlands won first prize. The story attracted the interest of an editor at the publishing house of William Collins & Sons when he noticed his wife crying over a short story in the local newspaper and asked to see it for himself. It was MacLean's winning entry. The editor, Ian Chapman, enjoyed the story so much that he called MacLean and suggested that he try his hand at a novel. MacLean agreed. Over the next three months he worked evenings on the novel, H.M.S. Ulysses, drawing upon his years as a torpedo man in the Royal Navy. The novel came out in September of 1955 and sold a record 250,000 copies in hardcover in its first six months. It was to be the first in a long string of best-selling novels.

H.M.S. Ulysses is based on MacLean's own experiences during World War II. For much of the war he worked on convoy ships delivering much-needed supplies to Britain, the Soviet Union, and other Allied nations. The work was perilous. MacLean was wounded twice by the Nazis and captured by the Japanese. The Japanese tortured him, pulling out his teeth "without benefit of anesthetic," as MacLean once remarked. The ordeal, Bob McKelvey noted in the Detroit Free Press "left him bearing a grudge against the Japanese until his death."

The pain and hardship of the war at sea is evident in H.M.S. Ulysses, the story of a convoy in the North Atlantic which battles German submarines as well as the treacherous weather. "Even in his first novel," Robert A. Lee wrote in his Alistair MacLean: The Key Is Fear, "MacLean has an acute sense of plot and structure, and it is clear that he understands quite well the consequences of action as defined by the necessities of story-telling." Reviewers of the time found faults with MacLean's work, citing a melodramatic tendency, for example, but saw the novel as a forceful and realistic portrayal of the war at sea. E.B. Garside of the New York Times claimed that "this novel is a gripping thing.... Mr. MacLean, former torpedoman, now a Scottish schoolmaster, has caught the bitter heart of the matter." Writing in the Saturday Review, T. E. Cooney maintained that "Mr. MacLean's true achievement [is] that of setting down in print the image of war, so that any reader, regardless of his experience, can say, that is what it was like."

This "first and greatest work," as Martin Sieff of the Washington Times called H.M.S. Ulysses, was MacLean's personal favorite and the novel which he believed was his best work. It also set the pattern for much of his later novels. Its emphasis on men battling the elements as well as the immoral machinations of other men was to recur in all of MacLean's later books. Speaking of the clear demarcation between good and evil to be found in MacLean's work, Sieff explained that MacLean's "novels are imbued with a powerful, uncompromising moral vision-that there is wickedness in the world and that it must be recognized and fought to the death, come what may."

Despite the success of his first novel, MacLean was too cautious to leave his teaching job. He suspected that the book's success might prove to be only a fluke. It wasn't until his second novel, The Guns of Navarone, appeared in 1957 to popular acclaim that he became a full-time writer. This novel, telling of a mission to destroy an enemy gun installation during the Second World War, proved to be "MacLean's most famous and popular novel," as Lee observed. It is, William Hogan remarked in the San Francisco Chronicle, "a tense, compelling, extraordinarily readable adventure." The book sold some 400,000 copies in its first six months and is still a worldwide best-seller. In 1959, it was adapted as a successful motion picture starring Gregory Peck and David Niven and produced by Carl Forman.

After the success of The Guns of Navarone, MacLean moved to Switzerland, where he found the climate and tax laws to his liking. For a time he wrote one new novel every year. His usual writing schedule began early in the morning and lasted until early afternoon, working away on an IBM electric typewriter. "He never rewrote anything," Caroline Moorehead revealed in the London Times, "and resisted, with considerable stubbornness, even minor editorial changes proposed by [his publisher] Collins." MacLean's faith in his work proved to be justified. Once, after receiving the manuscript for a MacLean novel and judging it unsatisfactory, his publisher dispatched a representative to speak with MacLean about rewriting it. By the time the agent arrived in Switzerland, however, film rights to the book had already been sold and the rewrite idea was quietly shelved. "I don't write the first sentence," MacLean told Moorehead, "until I have the last in mind.... I don't even re-read. One draft and it's away." MacLean never kept copies of any of his books, preferring to give them away to friends and admirers. "I don't think any are very good." he explained to Moorehead. "I'm slightly dissatisfied with all of them. I'm pleased enough if at the end of the day I produced a saleable product-and that I do."

By the early 1970s, MacLean's books had sold over 20 million copies and had been made into several popular films. He was one of the top ten best-selling writers in the world and arguably the one whose books were most often adapted for the screen. MacLean made enough money from his writings that at one point in the 1960's he gave it up and went into business as a hotelier, buying the famous Jamaica Inn and three other hotels. But he found running a hotel chain too boring. When a filmmaker offered him the chance to write a screenplay in 1967, MacLean accepted. The resulting work, Where Eagles Dare, was a bestseller and a successful film and MacLean returned to his book-a-year schedule again.

The enormous amount of money that his adventure novels earned him never seemed to alter MacLean's lifestyle. Several observers noted that he lived frugally, content with few of the luxuries one might associate with such a successful writer. MacLean's frugality was in part the result of his innate caution. He had been raised in poverty and was always aware that his wealth might prove to be transitory. And, as Moorehead noted, he always felt "that it is morally wrong to earn so much." A writer for the London Times claimed that MacLean's "vast wealth lay uncomfortably on his conscience." At the time of his death in 1987, MacLean was living in a modest apartment in Switzerland, where he bought his own food and prepared his own meals.

Evaluations of MacLean's career are often colored by the sheer popularity of his books, which moved some critics to see him as nothing more than a writer who catered to mass tastes. And MacLean's flippant dismissals of his work abet this view. One such critic is Reg Gadney. Writing in London Magazine, Gadney described a typical MacLean adventure as "a hero, a band of men, hostile climate, a ruthless enemy…. The pace of the narrative consists in keeping the hero or heroes struggling on in the face of adversity. There's little time for reflection upon anything which does not contribute to the race: no characterization, merely the odd caricature: no subtlety of ploy, anything other than a fatuous one would get in the way. So the refinements are discarded and the narrative is a sprint from start to finish."

Yet, at his best, MacLean moved other critics to praise his work. Tim Heald of the London Times called him the "Yarn-spinner Laureate" and "one of the country's most distinguished old thriller writers." Heald affectionately explained that MacLean "is at his best on the bridge of an indomitable British craft fighting its way through stupendous seas. The crew - and part of the plot - will resemble one of those stories in which an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, and a Welshman say or do something incredibly characteristic. They will be united, not only against the appalling gale, but also against a number of perfectly filthy foreigners." According to Sieff, MacLean's strong points include his - in the earlier novels - powerfully compelling characters." Sieff maintained that MacLean "was also a master of black, biting wit - a quality for which he was seldom given credit."

Most reviewers did credit MacLean with writing absorbing adventure novels, a task he performed with particular skill in such books as H.M.S. Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, and Where Eagles Dare. In a review of Ice Station Zebra, the story of a nuclear submarine in peril under the Arctic ice cap, a Times Literary Supplement critic maintained that "the story evolves in a succession of masterful puzzles as astonishing as they are convincing…. There is so much swift-moving action, so much clever innuendo and such a feeling for relevant detail that one cannot help but be fascinated by the mind at work here." Speaking of Where Eagles Dare, Anthony Boucher of the New York Times Book Review described it as "a real dazzler of a thriller, with vivid action, fine set pieces of suspense, and a virtuoso display of startling plot twists."

Despite such appreciation of his work, MacLean always dismissed the value of his accomplishment. According to McKelvey, the author once claimed: "I am just a journeyman. I blunder along from one book to the next, always hopeful that one day I will write something really good." This appraisal of his work was not shared by Sieff, who ranked MacLean's H.M.S. Ulysses with "Nicholas Montsarrat's 'The Cruel Sea' as the greatest novel to come out of the maritime war." Lee concluded that "MacLean's books work best when he allies evil and the natural forces of violence, when he makes the structure of his novels an undulation of tension, release, and tension when he manages to twist his plots in such a way as to reveal parts of the mystery bit by bit, until a stunning denouement at the end. When all these elements mesh together in one harmonious whole, the result is adventure writing at its best." MacLean, according to Linda Bridges of the National Review, was "one of the best suspense writers around."