Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean
File:AlistairMacLean.JPG Alistair MacLean, late in life
Personal details
Born	Alistair Stuart MacLean (1922-04-21)21 April 1922 Shettleston, Glasgow, Scotland
Died	2 February 1987(1987-02-02) (aged 64) Munich, Germany
Nationality	Scottish
Residence	England Switzerland Croatia
Parents	Revd Alistair MacLean and Mary Lamont
Spouse	Gisela Heinrichsen (1953–1972) Mary Marcelle Georgius (1972–1977)
Children	Three sons (one adopted) with Gisela
Occupation	Author and teacher
Education	Daviot School Inverness Royal Academy Hillhead High School
Alma mater	University of Glasgow

Alistair Stuart MacLean (Scottish Gaelic language: Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers or adventure stories, the best known of which are perhaps The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, all three having been made into successful films. He also wrote two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart.

Life

MacLean was the son of a Christian pastor, and learned English as his 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.

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. From 1943, he served in HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. In Royalist he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz and other targets off the Norwegian coast. In 1944 he and the ship 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 and tortured 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.

MacLean was released from the Royal Navy in 1946. He then studied English at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1953, and then worked as a school teacher in Rutherglen.

While a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the maritime story "Dileas". 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 novel was a great success and MacLean was soon able to devote himself entirely to writing war stories, spy stories and other adventures.

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. They sold well, but MacLean made no attempt to change his writing style and his fans may easily have recognized him behind the Scottish pseudonym. MacLean's books eventually sold so well that he moved to Switzerland as a tax exile. From 1963–1966, he took a hiatus from writing to run a hotel business in England.

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 over-improbable plots. He also struggled constantly with alcoholism, which eventually brought about his death in Munich in 1987. He is buried a few yards from Richard Burton in Céligny, Switzerland. He was married twice and had three sons with his first wife; the third son was adopted.

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

Style

Compared to other thriller writers of the time, such as Ian Fleming, MacLean's books are exceptional in one way at least: they have an absence of sex and most are short on romance because MacLean thought that such diversions merely serve to slow down the action. Nor do the MacLean books resemble the later techno-thriller approach. Instead, he lets little hinder the flow of events in his books, making his heroes fight against seemingly unbeatable odds and often pushing them to the limits of their physical and mental endurance. MacLean's protagonists are usually calm, cynical men entirely devoted to their work and often carrying some kind of secret knowledge. A sometime twist is that one of the hero's closest companions turns out a traitor.

Nature, especially the sea and the Arctic north, plays an important part in MacLean's stories, and he used a variety of exotic parts of the world as settings to his books. Only one of them, When Eight Bells Toll, is set in his native Scotland. MacLean's best books are often those in which he was able to make use of his own direct knowledge of warfare and seafaring, such as HMS Ulysses which is now considered a classic of naval fiction. Stylistically, MacLean's novels can be broken down into four periods:

1. HMS Ulysses through to The Last Frontier. These four novels featured third-person narratives and a somewhat epic tone, and were mostly set during World War II. The Last Frontier contained overt philosophical and moral themes that were not well received. MacLean then switched gears to —
2. Night Without End through to Ice Station Zebra. These four novels (plus two more under the pseudonym Ian Stuart) all featured first-person (and sometimes unreliable) narration laced with a dry, sardonic, self-deprecating humour, and were all set in contemporary times. These are MacLean's most intensely plotted tales, masterfully blending thriller and detective elements. MacLean then retired from writing for three years, returning with —
3. When Eight Bells Toll through to Bear Island, a varied collection of six novels that still maintained a generally high quality, with some books harking back to each of the first two periods but usually taking a more cinematic approach (not surprising since he began writing screenplays during this time). Finally —
4. The Way to Dusty Death to the end (twelve novels). There were no more first-person stories, and his prose is thought to have often sagged badly, with excessive dialogue, lazily described scenes, and under-developed characters. Some bore these faults more than others, and all the books sold reasonably well, but MacLean never regained his classic form.

Certain themes are repeated in virtually all of MacLean's novels. For example, they typically feature a male character who is depicted as physically and morally indestructible (for instance, Carrington in HMS Ulysses or Andrea in The Guns of Navarone); such characters are also often described as having an almost inhuman tolerance for alcohol consumption (such as the Count in The Last Frontier or Jablonsky in Fear is the Key). MacLean was known to reuse plot devices, characterizations, and even specific phrases. For example, the description "huddled shapelessness of the dead" occurs in some form in several stories, while the villain, on realising that his death is imminent, has a face contorted into a "snarling rictus" (or wolfish grin) of terror. Names are often reused as well, with chief female characters being frequently named Mary, or a variation thereupon (Marie, Maria), while a number of MacLean's lead male characters are named John. His villains usually feature a coldly competent and ruthless mastermind paired with a hulking, brutishly powerful subordinate.

Force 10 from Navarone, MacLean's only sequel, picks up from where the film version of The Guns of Navarone leaves off, not his original novel. Otherwise MacLean eschewed inter-novel continuity, save for two instances of a character from one novel appearing in another – Colonel De Graaf from Puppet on a Chain reappeared in Floodgate, and Professor Benson from Goodbye California making a second appearance in Santorini.

MacLean's gravestone at the Vieux Cemetery in Céligny. He is buried a few paces away from Richard Burton's grave. The inscription reads "Come my friends 'tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Altogether, MacLean published 28 novels and a collection of short stories, as well as books about T. E. Lawrence and James Cook. There was confusion around MacLean's pseudonym "Ian Stuart". A thriller titled Snow on the Ben by "Ian Stuart" was published by Ward in 1961, the same year as The Dark Crusader, but this was actually by an English author – Ian Stuart (1927–1993), who also wrote as Malcolm Gray. MacLean used the pseudonym only once more (on The Satan Bug, 1962). Some reference works still list Snow on the Ben as a possible MacLean novel.

Many of MacLean's novels were made into films, but none completely captured the level of detail and the intensity of his writing style as exemplified in classics such as Fear is the Key; the two most artistically and commercially successful film adaptations were The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. Moreover, MacLean also wrote screenplays, some of them based on his novels and others later novelized by other writers. MacLean wrote the novel and screenplay of Where Eagles Dare at the same time; in effect it was commissioned by Richard Burton, who wanted to make a "boy's own" type adventure film that he could take his son to see. The book and screenplay differ markedly in that, in the book, the Smith and Schaffer characters at times go out of their way not to kill anyone, whereas in the film they basically shoot anything that moves. In fact, the film contains Clint Eastwood's highest on-screen body count, as well as a far more laconic interpretation of the Schaffer character.

Around 1980, MacLean was commissioned by an American movie production company to write a series of story outlines to be subsequently produced as movies. He invented the fictitious United Nations Anti-Crime Organization (UNACO), and the books were later completed by others. Among these are Death Train by Alastair MacNeill and Hostage Tower by John Denis. "John Denis" was, in fact a pen name for John Edwards (former editor of the BBC "That's Life" programme) and his collaborator Denis Frost. Some of these works bear little resemblance to MacLean's style, especially in their use of gratuitous sex and violence.

MacLean's influence on future adventure/thriller writers is somewhat hard to measure, due to the conventions and expected requirements of the genre changing.

After his death, the popularity of MacLean's work saw a decline, and, according to Amazon.com, as of 2006 none of his novels were in print in the US. However, most are currently still in print in paperback in the UK.

Also, in 2009 HarperCollins began reissuing 29 of his novels, with new covers.

A novel Krwawe pogranicze (Polish Bloody borderland) was released in Poland in 1992. The novel was allegedly written by Alistair MacLean in 1962 as Bloody borderland. In fact, it was a novel by Tadeusz Kostecki Droga powrotna Płowego Jima (Polish Fawn Jim's return way) which was released in 1946 and almost forgotten in 1992.

List of works

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

Novels

Year	Title	Notes
1955	HMS Ulysses
1957	The Guns of Navarone
1957	South by Java Head
1959	The Last Frontier	in the US The Secret Ways
1959	Night Without End
1961	Fear is the Key
1961	The Dark Crusader	in the US The Black Shrike (as Ian Stuart)
1962	The Golden Rendezvous
1962	The Satan Bug	as Ian Stuart
1962	All about Lawrence of Arabia	Non-fiction
1963	Ice Station Zebra
1966	When Eight Bells Toll
1967	Where Eagles Dare
1968	Force 10 From Navarone
1969	Puppet on a Chain
1970	Caravan to Vaccarès
1971	Bear Island
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
1976	The Golden Gate
1977	Seawitch
1978	Goodbye California
1980	Athabasca
1981	River of Death
1982	Partisans
1983	Floodgate
1984	San Andreas
1985	The Lonely Sea	Collection of short stories (2 stories added for 2009 edition)
1986	Santorini

UNACO books by other authors

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

Movies 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 Movies

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

• 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. (Alternate title: Alistair MacLean: A Biography of a Master Storyteller.)
• Literary Encyclopedia entry
• Alistair MacLean at the Internet Movie Database
• AlistairMacLean.com Fan site
• Alistairmaclean.de Fan site
• Fan site
• Harper dares with Alistair MacLean reissue, 2009.09.11
• Polish site about Krwawe pogranicze