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Author of adventure/espionage novels
Alistair MacLean was born in Glasgow Scotland in 1922. He was the son of a Scottish minister and was raised in the Scottish Highlands near Inverness.
During World War II, MacLean served in the Royal Navy aboard a cruiser. After the war, he attended Glasgow University where he graduated in 1953 with an English Honors Degree. After graduation he worked as a schoolteacher at a high school in Glasgow, teaching English and history. 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. The editor suggested to MacLean that he try his hand at a novel. His years in the navy during World War II formed the background for his first book, HMS Ulysses. This book was published in 1955 and became the first in a long list of best sellers. Despite the success of his first novel, MacLean was too cautious to leave his teaching job. 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, was adapted in 1959 as a successful motion picture starring Gregory Peck and David Niven. 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. MacLean made enough money from his writing 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 boring, and 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. MacLean wrote two books in the early 1960s under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. These novels, The Black Shrike (a.k.a. The Dark Crusader) and The Satan Bug are now published under MacLean's name. Tim Heald of the London Times called MacLean "one of the country's most distinguished old thriller writers." Linda Bridges of the National Review called him "one of the best suspense writers around." MacLean died in Munich, Germany on February 2, 1987 and was buried Celigny, Switzerland. When he died, he left behind several outlines that have since been turned into books by authors John Denis and Alastair MacNeill. Books by Alistair MacLean:
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