Maclean, Alistair (1922–1987)

Scottish adventure novelist. His first novel, HMS Ulysses (1955), was based on wartime experience. It was followed by The Guns of Navarone (1957) and several other best-selling adventure novels. Many of his books were made into films.

His work is meticulously accurate in detail as well as being full of suspense. Among his other novels are Fear is the Key (1961), Ice Station Zebra (1963), and Where Eagles Dare (1967).

Maclean was born in Glasgow. He served in the Royal Navy from 1941–46, by his own account ‘from the Arctic to the Far East with many places in between’. He studied at Glasgow University after World War II ended, worked as a teacher, and then became a writer after winning a short-story competition in the Glasgow Herald in 1954.