Alistair Maclean Writing Style

[Alice Palecek]

According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama. Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers loved his combination of hot macho action, wartime commando sagas, and exotic settings that included Greek Islands and Alaskan oil fields."[2]

Alistair Stuart Maclean was born on 21 April 1922 in Shettleston, Glasgow, the third of four sons of a Church of Scotland minister,[3] but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, 10 miles (16 km) south of Inverness. He spoke only Scottish Gaelic before attending school.[4][5]

In 1941, at the age of 19, he was called up to fight in the Second World War with the Royal Navy, serving 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 antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland. Beginning in 1943, he served on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class light cruiser. There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz, and other targets off the Norwegian coast. He took part in Convoy PQ 17 on Royalist.[4] In 1944, Royalist and he 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 after blowing up bridges, and tortured by having his teeth pulled out, have been dismissed by both his son and his biographer as drunken ravings).[6][7] After the Japanese surrender, Royalist helped evacuate liberated POWs from Changi Prison in Singapore.

MacLean was discharged from the Royal Navy in 1946. He then studied English at the University of Glasgow, working at the post office and as a street sweeper.[8] He lived with his mother at 26 Carrington Street, at St Georges Cross, Glasgow while attending the university.[citation needed] He graduated with an MA (Hons.) in 1950, briefly worked as a hospital porter, and then worked as a schoolteacher at Gallowflat School (now Stonelaw High School) in Rutherglen.[9][10]

Whilst a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the maritime story "Dileas". He sold stories to the Daily Mirror and The Evening News. The wife of Ian Chapman, editor at the publishing company Collins, had been particularly moved by "Dileas" and the Chapmans arranged to meet with MacLean, suggesting he write a novel.[11] MacLean responded three months later with HMS Ulysses, based on his own war experiences and credited insight from his brother Ian, a master mariner.[8][12]

MacLean was paid a large advance of $50,000, which made the headlines. Collins were rewarded when the book sold a quarter of a million copies in hardback in England in the first six months of publication. It went on to sell millions more.[13] Film rights were sold to Robert Clark of Associated British for 30,000, though a film was never made.[14][15] This money meant MacLean was able to devote himself to writing full-time.[9][16]

His next novel, The Guns of Navarone (1957), was about an attack on the fictitious island of Navarone (based on Milos). The book was very successful, selling over 400,000 copies in its first six months.[8] In 1957, MacLean said, "I'm not a literary person. If someone offered me 100,000 tax free, I'd never write another word."[17] The film version of The Guns of Navarone (1961) was hugely successful.[18]

MacLean was unhappy at the tax paid on earnings for his first two novels, so he moved to Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where he would pay less tax. He planned to write one novel a year. "It's all the market can stand," he said, adding it took him three months to write it.[19]

MacLean followed it with South by Java Head (1958), based on his experiences in the seas off Southeast Asia in World War Two. Film rights for South by Java Head were sold, but no movie resulted.[20]

In the early 1960s, MacLean published two novels under the pseudonym "Ian Stuart" to prove that the popularity of his books was due to their content rather than his name on the cover.[21] These were The Dark Crusader (1961) and The Satan Bug (1962). He also said it was because "I usually write adventure stories, but this is a sort of Secret Service or private eye book. I didn't want to confuse my readers."[22]

In 1963, MacLean decided to retire from writing, saying he never enjoyed it and only did it to make money. He decided to become a hotelier and bought the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor and then bought two more hotels, the Bank House near Worcester and the Bean Bridge at Wellington in Somerset.[25][26][27] MacLean focused on his hotel career for three years. It was not a success, and by 1976, he had sold all three hotels. During this time, a film was made of The Satan Bug.[28]

Cinema producer Elliot Kastner admired MacLean, and asked him if he would be interested in writing an original screenplay. MacLean agreed to the proposition, and Kastner sent the writer two scripts, one by William Goldman and one by Robert and Jane Howard-Carrington, to familiarize himself with the format. Kastner said he wanted a World War Two story with a group of men on a mission to rescue someone, with a "ticking clock" and some female characters. MacLean agreed to write it for an initial $10,000 with $100,000 to come later. This script was Where Eagles Dare.[30]

In July 1966, Kastner and his producing partner Jerry Gershwin announced they had purchased five screenplays from MacLean: Where Eagles Dare, When Eight Bells Toll, and three other unnamed ones.[31][32] (Kastner made four MacLean movies.) MacLean also wrote a novel for Where Eagles Dare, after the screenplay, which was published in 1967 before the film came out. The book was a bestseller, and the 1968 film version was a huge hit.[33]

"MacLean is a natural storyteller", said Kastner. "He is a master of adventure. All his books are conceived in cinematic terms. They hardly need to be adapted for the screen; when you read them, the screen is in front of your mind."[34] MacLean wrote a sequel to Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone (1968). A film version was announced in 1967, but did not result for another decade.[35] The same year, an expensive film based on Ice Station Zebra was released.

In 1967, MacLean formed a partnership with Geoffrey Reeve and Lewis Jenkins to make films for MacLean to write and Reeves to direct. They planned to make a sequel to Guns of Navarone, only to discover that Carl Foreman, producer of the original film, had registered the title After Navarone. This led to a falling-out with Foreman, and a delay in the Navarone sequel.[36]

Maclean wrote a thriller about narcotics, Puppet on a Chain (1969), and Caravan to Vaccars (1970). These books all began as screenplays for Kastner.[37] Maclean said Puppet was "a change of style from the earlier books. If I went on writing the same stuff, I'd be guying myself."[38]

When Puppet on a Chain was made, Maclean said, "I've been connected with it for three years and it's too much for me. All those entrepreneurs and promoters who aren't creative. All that time wasted."[38]

Kastner produced a film version of When Eight Bells Toll (1971), based on a script by MacLean, and Fear Is the Key (1972), adapted by another writer.[40] Another producer made Puppet on a Chain (1971), directed by Reeves, from a script by MacLean.[41] Neither performed particularly strongly at the box office.[42]

In 1972, MacLean married his second wife, Mary Georgius.[43] She planned to produce three films based on his books, but the box-office failure of the last three MacLean adaptations put these on hold.[4] One of these proposed films was The Way to Dusty Death, which was to star Jackie Stewart. It ended up being a 1973 novel and a 1995 film.[4]

"I read a lot, I travel some," he said in 1975. "But mostly what I don't know, I invent."[50] In 1976, he was living in Los Angeles and said he wanted to write a four-volume serious piece called "The Rembrandt Quarter" based on the painting The Night Watch.[51] These books were never published.

In 1978, MacLean said he "just can't understand" why people bought his novels. "It's not as if I write that well: I do feel my English isn't very good. In fact, I'd rather write in Gaelic or Spanish than English."[6]

He said his stories tended to pit "character against character as a kind of intellectual chess game" and that he found writing "boring" and "lonely", but "I guess it all boils down to that rather awful philosophy of take the money and run."[6] "I am just a journeyman," he said. "I blunder along from one book to the next always hopeful that one day I will write something really good."[6]

MacLean died of heart failure [57] at the age of 64 in Munich on 2 February 1987; his last years were affected by alcoholism.[58] According to one obituary, "A master of nail-chewing suspense, MacLean met an appropriately mysterious death; when he died in the Bavarian capital after a brief illness, no one, including the British Embassy, knew what he was doing there."[2][59][58]He is buried in the cemetery in Cligny, Switzerland, near to the grave of his friend Richard Burton.

He was married twice and had three sons (one adopted) by his first wife, Gisela: Lachlan, Michael, and Alistair. He married for a second time in 1972; that marriage ended in divorce in 1977.[60]His niece Shona MacLean (also published under S.G. Maclean) is a writer and historical novelist.[61]

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