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.
South by Java Head
South by Java Head
The 50th anniversary edition of this classic World War 2 adventure set in south-east Asia.
February, 1942: Singapore lies burning and shattered, defenceless before the conquering hordes of the Japanese Army, as the last boat slips out of the harbour into the South China Sea. On board are a desperate group of people, each with a secret to guard, each willing to kill to keep that secret safe.
Who or what is the dissolute Englishman, Farnholme? The elegant Dutch planter, Van Effen? The strangely beautiful Eurasian girl, Gudrun? The slave trader, Siran? The smiling and silent Nicholson who is never without his gun? Only one thing is certain: the rotting tramp steamer is a floating death trap, carrying a cargo of human TNT.
Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship. Thus begins an ordeal few are to survive, a nightmare succession of disasters wrought by the hell-bent Japanese, the unrelenting tropical sun and by the survivors themselves, whose hatred and bitterness divides them one against the other.
Written after the acclaimed and phenomenally successful HMS Ulysses and The Guns of Navarone, this was MacLean’s third book, and it contains all the hallmarks of those other two classics. Rich with stunning visual imagery, muscular narrative power, brutality, courage and breathtaking excitement, the celebration of the 50th anniversary of South by Java Head offers readers a long-denied chance to enjoy one of the greatest war novels ever written.