Alistair MacLean

Alistair Stuart MacLean (1922-1987) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and spent his growing years nearby in Daviot, ten miles south of Inverness. His first language was Scottish Gaelic; he learned English at school. Drafted at 19 into the Royal Navy, he worked his way up from Ordinary Seaman to Leading Torpedo Officer while serving in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Far East. Discharged in 1946, he attended the University of Glasgow, studying English. Even then he had to work his way through, finding work as a postal worker and a street sweeper. After graduation he was a hospital porter and schoolteacher. Fortunately for MacLean and for the international publishing world and for generations of readers, a publisher noticed a story he wrote that won a competition and encouraged him to write a novel. In three months he wrote H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), a thriller that drew upon his experiences and his imagination.

MacLean’s first novel garnered him a very large advance (headline news in postwar Britain), but it was a good bet. It was a bestseller in the UK, sold for hefty film rights (never made), and it sold millions worldwide. He could afford to devote himself to fulltime writing. His next novel of The Guns of Navarone (1957), still considered one of the giants in the very large and good field of thrillers based retrospectively in World War II. It was made into a star-vehicle film still a regular on TCM to this day. MacLean had the golden touch in a competitive field.

MacLean was always defensive and self-effacing on what it meant to him to be a writer. “I’m a businessman,” he once said. “My business is writing.” He presented his work at formulaic, programmatic, and dedicated to making the most money possible. Still, this is the generation of British writers which had Graham Greene describe his novels as “entertainments,” Ian Fleming pose as a playboy who happened to write spy adventures, and C.S. Forester pass himself off as a historical salty yarn-spinner. All three self-presentations are deceptive, as is MacLean’s mercenary shield. If the reader wants to read a rattling good adventure, of course, MacLean is skilled at obliging. If the reader notices a working world of a particular time and place and mores, the novels have that, too. Homer set this duality underway, after all.

In 2020 HarperCollins Publishers decided to reprint MacLean with fine new covers and a uniform look. They may not reprint the later novels, which were written with collaborators working from outlines and notes from MacLean, but the great years of the beginning and middle of his career are well-represented.