At first glance, there seem to be few similarities between the fast-paced thrillers of Alistair MacLean and the (not quite) cosy mysteries of Agatha Christie. Yet their novels sometimes explore similar themes. During the Cold War, both writers tapped into widespread fears about science, atomic weapons, espionage, and ideological conflict, producing stories where secrecy and science threaten humanity itself.
MacLean’s 'The Satan Bug' (1962) and Christie’s 'Destination Unknown' (1954) share remarkably similar territory. Both revolve around the dangerous liaison of science and secrecy, a heady combination governments invariably claim to control right up to the almost inevitable moment when everything goes haywire.
In 'The Satan Bug', deadly biological agents are stolen from Mordon* Microbiological Research Establishment, a supposedly impregnable British laboratory, proving once again that 'top secret' usually means 'just one mistake away from disaster'. The theft of the Satan Bug triggers a frantic investigation led by security expert Pierre Cavell. The novel combines high-stakes action with fears of apocalyptic scientific power. Alistair MacLean explores the familiar reality that humans are often less reliable than the weapons they invent.
Christie’s 'Destination Unknown' takes a somewhat quieter but equally sceptical approach. Scientists vanish across the world, lured or coerced into a secret research facility, hidden in the Atlas Mountains that is disguised as a leper colony. Hilary Craven, a grieving woman with little left to lose, is recruited by British intelligence and infiltrates the settlement. There, those brilliant minds are gathered in isolation, raising unsettling questions about scientific ethics and coercion. Agatha Christie gently dismantles the comforting albeit gullible belief that brilliant minds will mostly produce something positive. Intelligence, in both novels, is shown as morally flexible and alarmingly easy to weaponise.
A major similarity between the novels is their use of isolated strongholds, a literary concept known as heterotopic spaces. Both MacLean and Christie use these sealed worlds cut off from society where scientific idealism is manipulated and controlled. Both settings intensify tension while reflecting Cold War anxieties about biological warfare and atomic secrets.
Espionage and human vulnerability also connect the two stories. Alistair MacLean’s protagonist struggles with betrayal and moral conflict amid relentless action, while Agatha Christie’s 'protagonix' begins her venture in despair after personal tragedy before finding purpose in a dangerous undercover mission. Both authors try to put a human face on global political threats through emotionally vulnerable protagonists.
Obviously, the authors differ greatly stylistically. Alistair MacLean relies on pace, danger, and physical action, while Agatha Christie emphasizes psychological tension and deduction. Yet both successfully blend detective fiction with the spy thriller.
Both novels do capture the mid-last century fears about science becoming a sort of modern Pandora’s box. Add to that the looming threat of the atomic bomb, and you can imagine the almost collective anxiety that pervaded society. Even today, in an age still concerned with war, lab leaks, and technological secrecy, both books remain remarkably relevant.
* I wonder whether Alistair MacLean had read 'The Lord of the Rings', given the conspicuous similarity between 'Mordon' and 'Mordor,' the shadowy realm of the Dark Lord Sauron.
What happens if you disturb a nest of hornets? Well, you might get stung. Repeatedly.
Long ago I wrote here about Alastair MacNeill: 'The entire author profile smells fishy, the submitted manuscript that started his career was never published and I’m wondering why Alastair MacNeill hasn’t written a novel since 2000 when one reads that he came to Britain to ‘pursue a career in writing'.
His agent at Christopher Little claims (personal communication, June 7, 2013) that ‘Alastair MacNeill has not permanently retired from writing, but he does not have any work that is due to be published in the near future either’ and – rather cryptically – that ‘He has not written anything under a pseudonym’. Which is technically true if Alastair MacNeill is itself a pseudonym.
Curiously, shortly after I had contact with his agents, MacNeill’s profile on their website changed. It now claims that Alastair MacNeill 'has now moved back to live in South Africa'.
And then, out of the blue, a new novel (could one say ‘a novel novel’?) has been published under the name Alastair MacNeill. ‘Facades‘ (shouldn't that be 'Façades'?) has been released in June, 2015 and tells us that it is written by the 'Author of Double Blind'.
The blurb:
Rachel Walker was an experienced bodyguard with Scotland Yard’s elite Specialist Protection Branch until the death of a five year old girl on her watch sent her into a spiral of depression and guilt. But now, six months later, and with her confidence still fragile she wants to start afresh in the private sector. The chance comes when she’s offered the job of minding Kira Stepashin, the daughter of a wealthy Russian couple who’s coming to London to celebrate her twenty-first birthday. But within hours of her arrival in London, Kira learns that her father has died back home. Kira immediately goes to ground, leaving Rachel baffled and disturbed by her abrupt disappearance. But when Kira’s mother flies in from Moscow the following day with news that her late husband had a contract out on their daughter, Rachel finds herself in a desperate race against time to try and find her before the assassin does. But the more Rachel unravels about the Stepashin family, the more she realizes that both mother and daughter may be harbouring secret agendas of their own. And with time fast running out before the assassin strikes, Rachel doesn’t know who she can trust any more…
But the most interesting feature is that 'Facades' has only been issued as an e-book. Which is rather odd, because Alastair MacNeill supposedly wrote a number of books that met with reasonable commercial success.
So, according to his agents, Alastair MacNeill has returned to South-Africa and – two years before – had not any work that was due to be published in the near future. Then 'Facades' became available via Amazon.co.uk. No publicity has been generated by his agents and what does a writer these days do to create his own publicity? He turns to social media and posts glowing reviews and news on Twitter and Facebook. Not Alastair MacNeill. He is curiously absent from social media.
Which begs the question again: is the pseudonym Alastair MacNeill again used by another unknown writer from the client list Christopher Little?
Not long thereafter, the book mysteriously disappeared from amazon.co.uk.
When Alistair Maclean won a short-story competition, run by the Glasgow Herald’s Weekend page on March 6th, 1954, Iris I. J. M. Gibson of Wellmeadow House, Paisley, was named runner-up for her story 'Now Such Light', earning the (then) considerable sum of £50.
We all know what became of MacLean after the publication of 'The Dileas'. But what of the others?
Unlike MacLean, Iris Gibson (1927) did not go on to write thrillers. Instead, she pursued a career in medicine, although her interest in mystery never quite left her. Her inquiries simply took a somewhat different form: the mysteries of illness, their history, and of the human body.
Medical Journals
Iris Gibson became a consultant physician in geriatric medicine and went on to publish extensively in several respected medical journals.
Among her most cited works is 'Death Masks Unlimited' (1985), in which she traces the cultural and historical significance of death masks[1].
Dorothy Wordsworth
She also turned her attention to literary history, attempting to diagnose the long and debilitating illness of Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855)[2].
Dorothy Wordsworth was an English writer, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), and the two were close all their adult lives. Dorothy Wordsworth had no ambitions to be a public author, yet she left behind numerous letters, diary entries, topographical descriptions, poems, and other writings. In 1829, Dorothy Wordsworth fell seriously ill. After a brief recovery, her condition worsened again in 1831, and she continued to suffer from an unknown degenerative illness for the remainder of her life. She died on January 25th, 1855, exactly one month after her 83th birthday.
What did ail Dorothy Wordsworth?
Gibson suggests that Dorothy’s symptoms were consistent with migraine, due to considerable physical and mental activity, to the stress of William's problems and struggles with composition, and her undue anxiety about him. She points to the demanding lifestyle shared by the Wordsworth circle:
Gibson also highlights the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) who played a significant part in both their lives. He was a poet of genius, a man of great vitality and charm, evasive, an opium addict, and in an unhappy marriage. 'I am in no doubt,' writes Gibson, 'that Dorothy found him sexually attractive and that this and Coleridge's own problems contributed to the migraine. It is not so much when Coleridge is actually present that she gets migraine, but farewells precipitate attacks.'
'It is difficult to make clear the degree of Wordsworthian physical and mental overactivity,' Iris Gibson continues, 'They walked incessantly. They talked incessantly. They wrote letters and read incessantly.'
The striking phrase 'a Drench of sleep' is a vivid, somewhat archaic expression meaning a heavy, saturating, or profound bout of sleep — like being thoroughly 'drenched' or soaked in it. It originates from Dorothy Wordsworth's journals (the above entry is from January 10, 1803), where she describes staying in bed for an extended, restorative sleep, likely to recover from fatigue or headache. In modern contexts, especially among those familiar with migraine, this phrase is sometimes referenced to describe the intense, overwhelming need for deep sleep that can accompany or follow a migraine attack.
The Death of Iris Gibson
Archaeology was also on the passions of Iris Gibson. However, when on an expedition to Turkey, she tumbled into a deep pit and was badly injured. She never fully recovered, and was forced to retire in 1988. Iris Gibson died untimely on April 15, 1993. She was just 65 years old.
Today, Iris Gibson is largely forgotten, which is a fate not uncommon for those who stand just outside the spotlight of literary fame. Yet her life tells a compelling story of a writer who turned to medicine, of a physician who pursued intellectual curiosity across disciplines, and of a mind that never lost its fascination with mystery.
[1] Gibson, Iris I.J.M.: Death Masks Unlimited in British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) - 1985. See here.
[2] Gibson, Iris I.J.M.: Illness of Dorothy Wordsworth in British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) - 1982. See here.
A SHORT-story competition run by the Glasgow Herald’s Weekend page in 1954 attracted 942 entries from as far away as India, Canada, and the United States.
Some, we observed, did not really qualify as short stories, being straightforward accounts of holidays at home or abroad, or narratives of true incidents at a conversational rather than a literary level (an assertion that was speedily challenged by one reader in a letter to the paper).
All 942 entries were read and assessed. And, once that had been done, the judges awarded the prizes.
The authors of the fourth- and third-placed entries, respectively, Henry R. Saunders, of Gartocharn, and D.R. Miller, Greenock, both received £25. The runner-up, Iris I.J.M. Gibson, of Paisley, was given £50.
The winner, who received £100, was a 30-year-old Rutherglen schoolteacher who after his war-time naval service had studied for a degree at Glasgow University. He had had short stories published in a couple of periodicals but, until The Herald contest, he had not written one for several years. His winning entry was entitled 'The Dileas' (‘The faithful one’). His name: Alistair MacLean.
The story, about a shipwreck off the West Highlands, was published in the Saturday edition of the Herald, on March 6, 1954. “Three hours gone, Mr MacLean, three hours – and never a word of the lifeboat”, it began.
A Herald reader, Marjory Chapman, mentioned the story to her husband Ian, who worked for Collins’s Bible department. With The Herald’s assistance he contacted MacLean and, over dinner at the old Royal Restaurant, asked if he had thought of writing a novel. No, came the reply; but Chapman persisted and, at length, MacLean gave him the manuscript of a novel, HMS Ulysses. Published in October 1955, it had sold 25,000 copies by Christmas.
His next work, The Guns of Navarone, came out the following year.
A few years before his death in 1987 MacLean asked The Herald if he could have the copyright of The Dileas. It was willingly granted, in exchange for an exclusive article that he wrote for this newspaper.
Told at breakneck speed, featuring wild action, high body counts, claustrophobic settings and black-hearted treachery, to his fan, Alistair MacLean invented the modern thriller.
[David Niven, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn The Guns Of Navarone - 1961]
The son of a Presbyterian minister from the Highlands, he would become one of the 20th Century’s most read authors and novels like 'The Guns Of Navarone' and 'Where Eagles Dare' were destined to become big screen blockbusters starring Clint Eastwood and Gregory Peck.
But MacLean never rated himself as an author, and believed he would have been a better novelist had he written in his first language, Gaelic, rather than English.
Patronised by literary critics, but adored by the public, he sold 150 million books and 18 of his 28 novels were made into movies, yet he boasted of how much he detested writing, and would churn out books in a matter of weeks because he disliked the process so much that he wanted it over and done with.
As the centenary of his birth approaches in 2022, a BBC Alba documentary examines the life of a complex man who entertained millions, yet who was a brusque character around family and friends.
"Alistair thought of his novel writing as a formula. I think that’s to diminish his ability," said Ian Chapman, whose parents, Ian and Marjory, discovered MacLean. Ian Senior worked with Scottish publisher William Collins and persuaded them to sign him after the couple fell in love with a short story he wrote for a newspaper competition.
"He was a storyteller,” Chapman continued. “He was great on character, great on story. He never thought of himself as a good writer. On occasion he said he would prefer to write in Gaelic or even Spanish than in English. He didn’t feel his English was good enough, which is clearly nonsense.”
MacLean was brought up in Inverness-shire, but when his dad died at 49, his mum took her three youngest sons to Glasgow, where her eldest boy was studying. Alistair hated the city, and volunteered for the Navy during the war, serving on two Arctic convoys. At the end of his service, he went to university and became an English teacher, writing short stories in his spare time.
Alistair Maclean autographing The Guns of Navarone at Smiths Bookshop in Glasgow
His first novel, 'HMS Ulysses', based on his experience of war, was a huge success, as was his second book, 'The Guns Of Navarone', so he gave up teaching, left Scotland behind, and became a millionaire novelist and screenplay writer, penning scripts for four of his movies.
Author Mairi Kidd said: "The thing about his writing in general is it is very visual. He writes as if he is writing a film anyway, and I think his novels I like the most are very similar to watching a film. There’s a lot of fun, a lot of action, and they’re moving quickly, and I think that was a strength to work on something and see it in his head as a film".
Shona MacLean is Alistair’s niece and a successful author in her own right, having published nine novels. She remembers many of the encounters she had with her uncle as she was growing up.
"I remember the first time I met him, being really surprised that this person who was a name on TV and in books was just this very ordinary looking man who dressed like my dad, was a wee bit smaller, and was very quietly spoken," she said.
"One time I was on holiday with my sisters visiting Uncle Alistair in Dubrovnik and we were out on his boat. I was reading a Neil Gunn novel and he looked at me and said, "How many of my books have you read?", and I said none, so he gave me a copy of 'HMS Ulysses' and said, "Have the first hundred pages of that read by tomorrow or you’re sacked as my niece".
"He had quite a dry, particularly Highland, sense of humour, which he shared with my dad and their brothers. There’s a kind of underlying sarcasm which you can see in the books with the way men speak to each other. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and he didn’t like a lot of the hyperbole that I suspect was in the publishing and film worlds".
MacLean’s first marriage, to a German woman called Gisela Heinrichsen, ended in divorce, but not before he decided to give up writing in 1963, after publishing 10 novels, to become a hotelier.
He would return to fiction three years later, however, and would write a further 18 books. He married his second wife, Mary Marcelle Georgius, a French aspiring movie producer, in 1972, but they divorced five years later.
MacLean, by this point was drinking heavily, and he died in 1987, aged 64, after a series of strokes, shortly before his final book, Santorini, was printed.
Although his sales might not be what they once were, his influence remains strong, with John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad citing MacLean and Stephen King as two of his primary influences.
"I think if critics dismissed him they were probably missing the point", offered his niece. "It must have been very frustrating for them, because he had these huge sales but actually, when you read the books, the writing is exceptionally good and he deals with human emotions, he deals with human potential, and human weaknesses".
And she believes more 21st Century readers should be discovering the joy in the nail-biting suspense of an Alistair MacLean novel.
"I think the ones who haven’t read him and who enjoy a good adventure story would enjoy them very much," she added.
Best-selling author Alistair MacLean and his friend and Formula One champion Jackie Stewart announced they were going to team-up for the filming of MacLean’s 'The Way To Dusty Death', which was set in the world of F1.
In an archive interview with the two men, shown in the new documentary, Stewart said: "I’m looking for something to replace motor racing in a way, and I’m sure this is one of the reasons Alistair has written this for me".
"If I found myself being able to do this film, I would then have a reason to stop motor racing, to take up something else I could be excited by, and could replace the pleasure and excitement that motor racing gives me".
The film failed to get off the ground, but it was eventually made as a TV-movie in 1995, with Simon MacCorkindale in the lead role.
Written by By Murray Scougall for The Sunday Post [December 27, 2021]
After writing here about The Mysteries of the MacLones, I was contacted by Simon Gandolfi (1933), writer of five (or three) novels that were based on an script for a movie or television series in the 1970s.
Simon Gandolfi wrote: ‘Yes, I wrote five books featuring Trent. The publishers gave me a rough film treatment by MacLean featuring a protagonist living on a converted tug boat, action taking place off the UK coast. I returned the treatment as unusable. The publishers then mislaid it!’
This first few sentences contain a very interesting piece of information: there appears to be an unused (or underused) rough film script, written by MacLean featuring a protagonist living on a converted tug boat and the action is situated off the UK coast. Which means a new writer can be contracted to write entirely new thriller based on Alistair MacLean’s imagination.
‘The protagonist, Trent, and the Caribbean, Central American and Asian story lines were entirely my creation. No reference to these books has been removed (carefully or otherwise) from my site or web blog,’ writes Simon Gandolfi. Still, no mention of these thrillers remain on his site or web blog. Which means that these books were never on his website at all. Now, in 2025, the entire website is defunct.
‘The MacLean Estate did not buy back the film rights – or, if they did, I was never informed and am anxious to know what proof you have as a percentage of film rights were part of my contracts; I stopped writing Trent on discovering the doubts concerning the film rights; Chris Little was the agent. I personally have no idea nor proof or information about any percentage of film rights.’
In theory, Simon Galdolfi should simply have contacted the estate of Alistair MacLean to get clarification. If the doubts about the potential film rights could be resolved much earlier, Simon Gandolfi might even have been tempted to write another novel featuring Trent. Now at 92, he enjoys his retirement.
Ian Chapman (1925-2019) began his career in book publishing at William Collins, the renowned Scottish publisher. There he read a short story in ‘The Glasgow Herald’ by the (then) unknown Glasgow-born author Alistair MacLean titled ‘Dileas’ about the sea and sailors which had won first prize in a competition run by the paper. Chapman found it finely written and totally compelling.
Chapman contacted MacLean, who was then a teacher at Gallow Flat School in Rutherglen, and invited him to join him and his wife for lunch in the grand Royal Restaurant in Glasgow’s Nile Street. The Chapmans found MacLean to be a wee bit dour with a strong Highland accent and showed little enthusiasm when Chapman suggested that he should write a novel for William Collins.
However, the Chapmans persisted at the lunch and probed MacLean on his war experiences in the Royal Navy when he sailed on the Murmansk convoys to northern Russia in terrible weather conditions and experienced savage bombardment from the German navy. Chapman instantly recognised the potential for a thrilling adventure story. MacLean left without any agreement to write even an outline and the Chapmans presumed the lunch had been a useless exercise.
But a few weeks later Chapman’s phone rang and MacLean’s strong accent asked, “So, do you want to come and collect that thing?” Chapman dashed to MacLean’s tenement in Rutherglen and was handed a bundle casually wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. MacLean simply commented, “Ach, any idiot can write a book.”
As Chapman hurried home he held the manuscript of ‘HMS Ulysses’ which told of the Russian convoys and the crew being pushed to breaking point. Chapman read the book overnight and immediately knew he had a best seller in his hands. It was published in 1955 and sold a quarter of a million copies in six months.
His career prospered and Chapman guided MacLean’s career both as publisher and agent until the author’s death in 1987.
The success of ‘HMS Ulysses’ certainly ensured that Chapman could move to London in 1955 and rose to become, in 1968, joint managing director and chairman from 1981-89. He was managing director when Rupert Murdoch (chairman of News UK, of which HarperCollins is now a subsidiary) bought 41.7% of Collins. Chapman resigned in 1989, setting up Chapman Publishers with his wife Marjory which was later bought by Orion.
Alistair MacLean never wanted to live the celebrity-author lifestyle and it took all Chapman’s tact and persuasion to get him to attend the 1961 royal film premiere of ‘The Guns of Navarone’, when he was presented to the Queen. Similarly, in 1969 for the London premiere of ‘Where Eagles Dare’, Chapman eventually got MacLean not only to attend the film but organised a private table at the after-premiere banquet at the Savoy at which he and MacLean sat amongst the stars, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.
Richard Burton and Alistair MacLean became close friends. Richard Burton and Alistair MacLean are both buried in the same cemetery in Céligny (Switzerland).
When The Cruel Sea, written by Nicholas Monsarrat (1910–1979), appeared in 1951, it was greeted with immediate acclaim. Only six years had passed since the end of the Second World War, and readers recognised in Monsarrat’s novel a truthful, unvarnished account of the Battle of the Atlantic. It became a bestseller almost overnight, praised for its sober realism and its refusal to romanticise naval warfare.
By contrast, the early reception of Alistair MacLean’s debut HMS Ulysses (1955) was far more turbulent. One of the first reviews notoriously described it as "the worst insult to the Royal Navy ever published." That denunciation, rather than harming the book, only sharpened public curiosity. Within weeks, HMS Ulysses had surged to the top of the bestseller lists. And as more critics weighed in, a consensus emerged: despite their different styles, MacLean’s novel deserved to stand beside The Cruel Sea as one of the most harrowing depictions of the North Atlantic campaign.
What, then, had MacLean written to provoke such a scalding reaction? HMS Ulysses is not a tale of polished heroism but a relentless chronicle of stress, exhaustion, and the brutal Arctic environment. The crew of the fictional cruiser 'Ulysses' is pushed beyond human endurance. So far, in fact, that a mutiny erupted on their previous voyage. The Admiralty, portrayed as remote and insulated from the realities of sea duty, grants the ship and her men one final chance to redeem themselves: escort a convoy to Murmansk and, if necessary, act as bait to draw out the feared German battleship 'Tirpitz', then lurking in a Norwegian fjord. In MacLean’s narrative, the enemy is not only the Germans but the Arctic itself — a force as lethal and indifferent as any weapen the Germans could direct at them.
Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea shares this refusal to divide the war into neat categories of good and evil. His focus is the corvette 'Compass Rose', a small, under‑equipped vessel tasked with protecting convoys in the freezing weather of the north Atlantic. Like MacLean, Monsarrat emphasises the grinding hardship of escort duty: the cold that never lifts, the constant threat of U‑boats, the moral weight of command decisions that may save one ship only by sacrificing another. His characters are not idealised heroes but ordinary men trying to endure and survive an extraordinary mission.
Both novels, in their different ways, strip away the mythology of naval warfare. They show the sea as a battlefield where courage is measured not in grand gestures but in the ability to keep going — hour after hour, watch after watch — in conditions that erode the body and the mind. They also share a historical authenticity: Monsarrat served in corvettes throughout the war, while MacLean drew heavily on his own experience as a Royal Navy rating on Arctic convoys.
So which is the better novel? That is a matter of personal taste. The Cruel Sea is quieter, more reflective, shaped by Monsarrat’s documentary realism. HMS Ulysses is fiercer, more operatic, driven by MacLean’s instinct for drama and pacing. But the two books have more in common than in conflict. Together they form a dual testament to a campaign that was both essential and appallingly costly. A chapter of the war that, despite its significance, is too often overshadowed by events on land.
If anything, reading them one after the other reminds us how quickly collective memory fades, and how vital it is to preserve the stories of those sailors who fought not only the enemy but the sea itself.
Alistair Maclean (1922-1987) was the third son of Reverend Alistair MacLean (1885-1936). While Alistair MacLean became known for this fast-paced thrillers, his father was known for his fire and brimstone sermons. Just 47 of those sermons were collected in ‘High Country’ (1928).
[Rev. MacLean and his family (Alistair MacLean is on the far right)]
A review appeared in ‘The Living Church’ (November 30, 1952): High Country is a delicate and delightful little book of sermons which tingles with a wholesome Scottish simplicity. The writer strives to imitate the method of our Lord, “who offers His jewels in artistic and delightful settings.” In the series of 47 sermons, dealing with the inner life, we find a beautiful gallery of pictures and a fresh selection of biographical anecdotes.
This book, extremely concrete, offers much to the person who may choose to use it as a manual for meditation. Since the sermons were first written for the author’s “congregation of simple folk”, they enunciate the fundamental truths of Christian inner experience, not in a speculative way, nor in a language about common understanding, but in a manner clear and at once appealing.
The seminarian and young priests learn much about a vigorous style of sermon-structure from this collection. Here is a great well of fresh illustrated material and a method of preaching which can hardly fail to enliven the pulpit.
Unfortunately, the book cannot be recommended for the use of lay-readers and their work for the church. Naturally, the writer cannot escape his Calvinistic attitudes and he makes many references to Scottish literature which will mean very little to Anglican congregations.
But the book may give an insight into the reticent character of Alistair MacLean, because growing up in such an environment cannot but leave its mark on a personality.
Another publication of Reverend Alistair MacLean is 'Hebridean Altars: Some Studies of the Spirit of an Island Race'. The book is described as an 'influential work by the Rev. Alistair Maclean of Daviot, in which the author "gives in beautiful language, translations from the original Gaelic, of prayers and runes which he collected throughout the Hebrides".
When you have grown up, like I have, in the now long forgotten age that managed to do without internet, social media, and mobile phones, you would often pass your spare time reading. Then, you would eagerly scour the thriller-section in your local bookshop, searching for the latest Alistair Maclean.
‘Master Storyteller’ informed the covers of the Fawcett paperbacks the unwary. In those days, that was quite unnecessary. Alistair Maclean was one of the greatest writers of fast-paced thrillers that ever lived, though he himself claimed that he disliked writing.
Alistair MacLean was born in 1922 and too young to enter the Second World war early on. In the end, MacLean’s did see a fair bit of action in the war. However, he never was in mortal danger as most of his protagonists were.
In the spring of 1941 MacLean left his native Scotland to start his naval training. In August 1943 he joined the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Royalist. Launched in May 1943, it needed extensive sea trails, fitting and refitting because the vessel could enter active service on March 30th, 1944.
Yes, Alistair MacLean took part in one of the most dangerous missions a vessel could be ordered to do: a run through the dark and foreboding Arctic waters, protecting a convoy bound for Murmansk. But after just one such mission, the Royalist was ordered to the Mediterranean. There, from July to September 1944, the vessel took part in several operations, but the end of hostilities loomed. After some additional refitting in Alexandria, the Royalist was sent to the Far East. For Alistair MacLean the war finally ended in March 1946, when he was officially demobilized.
Yes, Alistair MacLean saw a lot of the world, and he proved a good listener. He stored interesting nodules of knowledge in his brain. These could later filter through and become part of his thrillers. The rest, as they say, is history.
As a shy and lonely man, he had but a few friends. In the end, he died in 1987 like he had lived: a small dusty man in a small dusty room.
But what to make of ‘Alistair MacLean’s War’ by Mark Simmons? As MacLean died in 1987, most of the people who knew him are long dead too. Simmons extensively quotes from Jack Webster’s ‘Alistair Maclean: A life’, which is kind of superfluous, but the interesting idea is to also use quotes from MacLean’s own thrillers. Also, Simmons uses the war itself as a sort of canvas for the story. Tied together, these threads give the reader a novel insight in what sort of man Alistair MacLean was, what he became, and how the Royal Navy shaped his thrillers.
A bit of a drawback is that Mark Simmons has a somewhat wooden and lifeless way of writing.
Still, ‘Alistair MacLean’s War’ is a valuable tribute to the life of the man who produced some of the most memorable thrillers ever to be published.
Shona MacLean (1966) is one of the five children of Alistair MacLean’s brother Gillespie MacLean and his wife Margaret. Her progress through life was closely followed by her uncle Alistair MacLean and he even encouraged her to become a writer.
While at university, Shona studied in France for a while and Alistair MacLean – not wanting his niece to waste time and effort on menial jobs to earn a bit of money – simply suggested to deposit the then considerable sum of ₤3,000 for her. He told Shona that she could “pay him back when I’m old and decrepit and bankrupt”.
By the time she started working on her first novel, in her early twenties, her uncle had died. She didn’t finish that first effort and only recently returned to writing. Shona MacLean, currently lives in Conon Bridge (Scotland) with her husband, Dr James Vance, the rector at Golspie High School, and their four children.
At the moment Shona MacLean has published a series of historical crime mysteries that feature Alexander Seaton, a disgraced minister turned teacher who is caught up in the political and religious turmoil of Scotland in the early 17th century. Another series feature Damian Seeker, agent of Oliver Cromwell who has declared himself Lord Protector. A standalone, 'Bookseller of Inverness' is set in the 18th Century.
Her first novel is called 'The Redemption of Alexander Seaton' and her publishers have called it “a compelling thriller and brilliant historical novel”. That she has all the historical facts correct is no wonder: Shona MacLean completed a PhD in 17th century history at Aberdeen University.
But you could run into problems if you should want to search for books that bear her name because her publishers have decided to re-brand her books under the name of S.G. MacLean. “The thinking was that my name was too soft and feminine and men wouldn’t buy my books,” she explained. It is however an obvious attempt to emulate the success of Joanne Rowling, better known as J.K. Rowling.
All of this is really unnecessary because the books should speak for themselves. They are simply brilliantly written historical novels. They also show that Shona MacLean is a worthy successor to her uncle.
Books:
2008: The Redemption of Alexander Seaton (Alexander Seaton 1)
2010: A Game of Sorrows (Alexander Seaton 2)
2011: Crucible of Secrets (Alexander Seaton 3)
2013: The Devil's Recruit (Alexander Seaton 4)
2015: The Seeker (Damian Seeker 1)
2016: The Black Friar (Damian Seeker 2)
2018: Destroying Angel (Damian Seeker 3)
2019: The Bear Pit (Damian Seeker 4)
2020: The House of Lamentations (Damian Seeker 5)
2022: The Bookseller of Inverness (stand-alone)
2023: The Winter List (Damian Seeker 6)
2026: The Cromarty Library Circle (stand-alone)
Group Captain Eugene Emile Vielle (E.E. Vielle) was born in London in 1913, the son of a naval officer. His career in the Royal Air Force ranged from being a fighter pilot to 'world-wide duties' during Word War II. He ended the war commanding one of the largest RAF bases in England and in 1949 he was appointed Deputy Director of Operational Requirements at the Air Ministry in London. After his retirement from the RAF, Vielle initiated an avionics company, called Avel Corporation, to develop an aircraft anti-collision system. Quite an impressive career. Vielle died in 2015, just short of his 102th birthday.
Vielle wrote a couple of novels that were marketed as ‘With the Impact of Alistair MacLean’. His 'No Subway' is now a somewhat dated – and justly forgotten – story about problems that could possibly occur during the construction of the Channel Tunnel. However, his 'The Shadow of Kuril' is a still harrowing story that features HMS Thunderer, the latest of the navy’s nuclear submarines that disappears during a mission under the arctic ice.
Does 'The Shadow of Kuril' even now, decades later, continues to have the impact of Alistair MacLean? I dare you to buy and read the novel and I can assure you that it still delivers the same punch as it once did in 1971.
The 'Shadow of Kuril' casts a long shadow. Read it and you will understand why the publisher thought this novel had (and still has) the impact of Alistair MacLean. The Master Storyteller himself would agree.
He began to write his memoirs, titled 'Almost a Boffin' in 1962, but did not publish them until 2013, as he felt too much of the content was even then confidential.
In the olden days, when the internet was not invented yet and amazon.com nor its sister site imdb.com weren’t there to help, it could be very problematic to check who wrote a book or who played in a movie. Luckily, I own a first edition of the truly massive 'Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers' (1568 pages) from 1980. In it, however, some novels were erroneously attributed to Alistair MacLean.
The problem arose with Alistair MacLean’s choice of his pseudonym, Ian Stuart, when he decided to show his publishers that he could sell a huge amount of books even when his own name wasn’t on the cover. Alistair MacLean was proven wrong, and both 'The Dark Crusader' (called 'The Black Shrike' in the US) and 'The Satan Bug' only really started to sell when the name of Ian Stuart was replaced by that of Alistair MacLean.
What Alistair MacLean clearly did not know was that there already was a novelist that bore the name of Ian Stuart. This real Ian Stuart (1927-1993) wrote some 19 thrillers and among them were 'The Snow on the Ben' (1961), 'Death from Disclosure' (1976), 'Flood Tide' (1977), 'Sand Trap' (1977), 'Fatal Switch' (1978), 'Weekend to Kill' (1978), 'Pictures in the Dark' (1979), 'The Renshaw Strike' (1980), 'Look Back On Murder' (1985, and 'Stab in the Back' (1986). The last two were written under the pseudonym Malcolm Grey, further muddying the waters.
These thrillers were therefore not written by Alistair MacLean but somehow were erroneously attributed to him in the first edition of 'Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers'.
It is truly sad that Ian Stuart didn’t even get his own section in the 'Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers', and these days his novels – although quite entertaining – are simply forgotten. I think that Ian Stuart’s novels should deserve a second lease of life.
His publishers, Robert Hale Ltd., responded to my email asking for a reappraisal of Ian Stuart and a possible re-issue of his novels with ‘We do not in fact have any plans to republish any of the Ian Stuart books, but thank you for contacting us’.
Jack Glover (1923-2025) was 19 when he was posted to HMS Royalist, a newly built Dido-class light cruiser, seeing action in every theatre during the Second World War from the Atlantic and the Arctic to the Mediterranean and the Far East. As a decoder, he was responsible for encrypting and decrypting wireless messages, communicating with naval headquarters and other warships, and intercepting signals from the German navy.
[Glover [R] with Alistair MacLean [L], and the launch of HMS Royalist at Greenock in 1942]
Although it was a demanding role, Glover considered himself to have got off lightly compared with many of his comrades, especially on the Arctic convoys. “I was operating inside the ship, so I wasn’t exposed to the Arctic weather, so I had a fairly easy time really,” he said. “I just remember the bunks being so close together”.
His bunkmate and “run-ashore oppo” on HMS Royalist was Alistair MacLean, who later wrote the bestselling novel 'HMS Ulysses' (1955), a fictional account of life on the Arctic convoys based on their experiences at sea.
While Glover is not referred to by name in 'HMS Ulysses', he recognised himself in some of MacLean’s characters. “I identified myself in them and in a lot of what was going on there as I was with him at the time. I was interested, I was part of that story,” he told a newspaper in 2023. The pair lost touch after the war.
Despite the horrendous conditions on the Arctic convoys, Glover recalled the camaraderie on board. “It was a dangerous job,” he told the BBC, while insisting that the dangers did little to dampen their enthusiasm. “We were young. We were 18, 19. We didn’t worry about things like that. We worried about getting to the nearest port and having a beer. Some things don’t change in the Royal Navy.”
His first deployment was on Atlantic convoy duties with the anti-submarine trawler HMS Butser, based at Freetown in Sierra Leone. In September 1943 he was assigned to HMS Royalist, which was just coming into service from Scotts, the shipbuilding and engineering company based in Greenock. Six months later, HMS Royalist served as the flagship for Operation Tungsten, targeting the German battleship Tirpitz at its base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway.
There were more Arctic escort duties that spring and in July 1944 Glover was deployed with HMS Royalist to the central Mediterranean for Operation Dragoon, landing Allied forces in Provence, in the south of France. Sailing east, there were operations in the Aegean Sea and off the Greek mainland before a passage to Ceylon and service in the East Indies with 21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron. They covered the landing operations in Malaya before being present for the surrender of Japanese forces in Singapore on September 12, 1945. HMS Royalist returned to Britain the following January and Glover was discharged from the navy in May 1946 with an impressive collection of campaign medals that included the Atlantic Star, the Arctic Star and the Burma Star.
Like MacLean, Glover would forgo his daily rum tot while at sea, choosing instead to bank the threepence substitute. “It soon added up,” he recalled at the time of his 100th birthday. “And I remember my 21st birthday, although not much of it. They gave me all their drinks to take sippers from. I passed out for two days. And I had to make up all the watches I missed.”
As described in my previous article here, Alistair MacLean served on HMS Royalist, a light cruiser of the Dido-Class of the Royal Navy. HMS Royalist was launched on May 30, 1942 and was commissioned after rigorous trials and tests in September 1943. Following her commissioning, HMS Royalist spent several months of extra trials, during which time she underwent repairs for trial defects and for alterations and additions. In March 1944 HMS Royalist finally joined the Home Fleet and served for a short period in the Arctic theatre.
[Image: HMS Royalist (http://www.naval-history.net)]
On the Naval History website, it is mentioned that HMS Royalist protected only a single convoy. Although the dates do conflict with the official reports, the convoy, designated HX 276, departed from Halifax (Canada) on or around January 22, 1944. HMS Royalist joined the convoy on February 2, 1944 and left the convoy after a rather uneventful journey on February 5, 1944. Weather conditions were described as average for the time of the year in the North Atlantic: throughout January 28 and 29, a moderate gale blew from the south, veering to the southwest, making it impossible to oil the escorts. Most of the escorts were occupied with rounding up stragglers.
Jack Webster, in his book 'Alistair MacLean, A Life', wrote that ‘MacLean’s ship took part in only two full runs to the outskirts of Murmansk…’ Sadly, this statement cannot be verified at this moment.
On March 30th HMS Royalist joined the escort for several battleships – HMS Anson, HMS Duke of York – and the aircraft carriers HMS Furious, HMS Victorious and HMS Jamaica in an unsuccessful attack on the German battleship Tirpitz, which was hiding in the Norwegian Altafjord (Operation Tungsten).
On her return from that sortie, HMS Royalist was ordered back to the Tyne shipyard for an extensive refit that lasted until August 1944. HMS Royalist was then ordered to steam to the Mediterranean to support the allied landings in the south of France (Operation Dragoon).
All this seems to suggest that Alistair MacLean might have used more of his imagination and less of his wartime experience in the Arctic to write his terrific novels that feature ships, cold, ice and wind, such as 'HMS Ulysses', 'Bear Island' and 'San Andreas'. But one should never underestimate the long-lasting effects of intense fear on a person’s psyche. Which means that fear might be the key to unlocking Alistair MacLean.
From 1943 onwards, Alistair MacLean was stationed on HMS Royalist, a Dido-class cruiser launched in 1942, which was part of the Home Fleet with orders to escort convoys in the icy waters of the North Atlantic en route to Murmansk. Too many ships and their crews did not make it safely back from that frozen part of hell.
Like so many others, Alistair MacLean, never talked about his harrowing experiences in the Second World War, but it surely must have had a lasting psychological effect on him. Although HMS Royalist was deemed lucky – it got through with nothing more than a hole in the funnel – the combination of horrendous weather conditions and the ever present danger of imminent death would result in what is now known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD) in many a survivor.
Later in the war, HMS Royalist was sent to the Mediterranean and the Far East. Alistair MacLean was apparently wounded during his service because his mother once detected a wound in his back. This injury was never satisfactory explained, but a clue can possibly be gleaned from 'HMS Ulysses', where MacLean described a shell exploding in its barrel, hurling two men against a bulkhead, resulting in terrible injuries. A third man was luckily thrown through an open door behind him and sustaining only minor injuries. Because a similar episode happened on HMS Royalist, there’s reason to believe that MacLean was that third man.
After the war, MacLean got an Honours degree in English at Glasgow University, and taught at Gallowfleet Secondary School. He was described as a taciturn, gaunt fellow who often mumbled.
PTSD can be viewed as continuous anxiety as a result of experiences of intense fear, helplessness or horror. Symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, a general numbing of emotional responsiveness, acute and unpredictable episodes of anger. Heavy use of alcohol is often associated with numbing and forgetting.
It also might explain why Alistair MacLean at first only wrote stories – among them 'The Cruise of the Golden Girl' and 'The Dileas' – about sailing in the Scottish waters. Those settings are far removed from the horrors of the North Atlantic. He would feel safe, secure, and at home writing about sailing in these dark waters.
The success of 'The Dileas' resulted in a request from the publishing company Collins to write a full-length novel for them, and he responded six weeks later with 'HMS Ulysses', based on his own war experiences. The writing must have been both traumatic, cathartic, and a meaningful way of dealing with his emotional problems.
I understand. I’m still fighting my own demons too.
Several writers continued to write in the wake of the success of Alistair MacLean. Depending on your definition, a total of 16 or 18 novels were written by five different authors. But almost every one of these ‘ghostwriters’ constitutes a bit of a mystery. Who were they and what became of them after they finished writing these so-called MacLones.
[1] John Denis
John Denis was a pseudonym of John Edwards and Denis Frost. John Edwards (1938-2012) worked at the BBC, and was, during the course of his career there, a broadcaster, deputy editor of Today, editor of That’s Life, Tonight and Checkpoint. Denis Frost (1925-2016), who as a journalist worked for the British newspapers Western Gazette, the Western Daily Press, and The Guardian, completed the duo.
They were chosen for the task of turning Alistair MacLean’s first two storylines featuring UNACO into proper novels. They were given the opportunity because they had written a now almost forgotten thriller called 'The Moscow Horse' in 1978.
Under the pseudonym John Denis, Edwards and Frost managed to write 'Hostage Tower' (1980) and 'Air Force One is Down' (1981).
John Denis subsequently published two other thrillers as a solo effort: 'Zero Plus One' (1985) and 'Goliath' (1987).
Then they stopped writing.
[2] Alastair MacNeill
Alastair MacNeill (1960) wrote a total of seven thrillers, based on six storylines and one short story that were left by Alistair MacLean. The novels that were based on these outlines were 'Death Train' (1989), 'Night Watch' (1989), 'Red Alert' (1990), 'Time of the Assassins' (1991), 'Dead Halt' (1992), and 'Code Breaker' (1993). His 'Rendezvous' (1995) was an expanded version of the short story of the same name that was published in Alistair MacLean's collection of short stories, 'The Lonely Sea'.
According to the blurb of the first novel and the current author page on the website of HarperCollinsPublishers, ‘MacNeill… having nurtured a keen interest in writing since his teens, [..] returned to the United Kingdom in 1985, hoping to pursue a career as a writer. He submitted a manuscript to HarperCollins Publishers and, on the strength of it, was offered the chance to write a novel based on an outline by the late Alistair MacLean. He eventually wrote seven novels based on MacLean synopses and has also written five novels under his own name’.
The entire author profile smells fishy, the submitted manuscript that started his career was never published,, and I’m wondering why Alastair MacNeill hasn’t written a novel since 2000 when one reads that he came to Britain to ‘pursue a career in writing’.
His agent at Christopher Little claims (personal communication, June 7, 2013) that ‘Alastair MacNeill has not permanently retired from writing, but he does not have any work that is due to be published in the near future either’ and – rather cryptically – that ‘He has not written anything under a pseudonym’. Which is technically true if Alastair MacNeill is itself a pseudonym.
Curiously, shortly after I had contact with his agents, MacNeill’s profile on their website changed. It now claims that Alastair MacNeill ‘has now moved back to live in South Africa’.
[3] Simon Gandolfi
Simon Gandolfi (1933) wrote his first novel, 'Even With the Shutters Closed', as far back as 1965. He did write some thriller-like novels and, on that basis, was contracted to write three novels about an ex-British intelligence agent Trent and his catamaran 'Golden Girl' that were once written by Alistair MacLean. These were meant to be the basis of a movie or television series in the 1970s. When Alistair MacLean divorced his second wife, she had been granted the rights to the script as part of the settlement but had failed to make any progress with it. The rights were eventually bought back by MacLean’s estate in 1989.
In the end, Simon Gandolfi wrote five novels featuring Trent but only the first three are considered true MacLones: 'Golden Girl' (1992), 'Golden Web' (1993) and 'Golden Vengeance' (1994). Hardly anybody knows that the sequels, 'White Sands' (1995) and 'Aftermath' (2000), also have Trent as their main character. These thrillers can be considered rogue MacLones.
Simon Gandolfi now writes about his travels around the world on his motorbike.
Any mention of his five books about Trent has been carefully removed from both his (now defunct) site and weblog.
[4] Hugh Miller
The website of HarperCollins mentions that ‘Hugh Miller was born in Scotland, but now lives in Warwick. He is the author of the bestseller 'Ambulance', as well as the highly acclaimed Mike Fletcher crime novels (that nobody remembers nowadays). He is an acknowledged expert on forensic medicine and has numerous TV credits’.
Hugh Miller (1937) wrote more than a dozen tie-ins for popular television series such as Eastenders and Ballykissangel. His crime novels about DI Mike Fletcher, 'Skin Deep' (1991) and 'An Echo of Justice' (1992), earned him the honour of writing the two final books based on Alistair MacLean’s UNACO: 'Prime Target' (1997) and 'Borrowed Time' (1998).
Hugh Miller has no known website and, since then, veered away from thrillers and after that only wrote books about forensic medicine.
[5] Sam Llewellyn
The next author to tackle the stories of Alistair MacLean was Sam Llewellyn (1948). Llewellyn was an avid sailor whose interest in the sea and sailing is reflected not only in his thrillers but also in his books for children. No wonder then that he was asked to write two sequels to Alistair MacLean's 'The Guns of Navarone' and 'Force 10 from Navarone. The result was: 'Storm Force Navarone' (1997) and 'Thunderbolt from Navarone' (1999).
What is a bit of a mystery is why these novels do not feature on Llewellyn’s website. He does seem justly proud of all other books and articles he has ever written.
[6] X is for Unknown
As there is renewed interest in the stories of Alistair MacLean, the publishers HarperCollinsPublishers may be considering contracting an author to write a new novel.
Keep visiting this website to be informed of the latest developments.
Alistair MacLean wrote 29 thrillers (including the collection of short stories in 'The Lonely Sea'). Other writers, such as John Denis, Alastair MacNeill, Simon Gandolfi, Hugh Miller, and Sam Llewellyn, first created novels out of existing story lines, short stories and ideas from Alistair MacLean. Then, some wrote thrillers that were sequels of existing books of alistair MacLean.
The last novel to reach the bookstores in 1999 was Thunderbolt from Navarone, a story by Sam Llewellyn and a sequel to Alistair MacLean’s The Guns of Navarone and Force 10 from Navarone.
But not everything Alistair MacLean has ever written was put into print or made into a movie.
If we try to collect the rumours that were made public piecemeal in the years after Alistair MacLean passed away we come to some surprising conclusions.
[1] Comments made in 2009 by David Brawn, publishing director for estates at HarperCollinsPublishers, reveal that ‘there are around a dozen of MacLean’s unpublished works that could be adapted into new titles by other authors‘. At the moment, these works are simply collecting dust in the offices of that publisher but this renewed interest in Alistair MacLean might be a great opportunity to start hiring a writer.
BTW: I am able to contact David Brawn and am willing to forward any requests or questions to him!
[2] In 1995, Alistair MacLean’s friend and literary executor, David Bishop, made a search of the cellars of MacLean’s mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva (Switzerland). He found three short stories that were unknown to anyone but the author. Two of these short stories we now know: 'The Black Storm' and 'The Good Samaritan'. Both short stories were added to a new imprint of The Lonely Sea. The title of the third story remains a mystery.
[3] The above mentioned search also revealed a complete 153 page long screenplay titled The Swashbuckler, a pirate adventure and it was written around 1968. This manuscript can also be turned into a exiting new novel.
If there was ever a time to publish these stories it is now. These days there is rekindled interest in the novels of Alistair MacLean. It would be a shame and a loss if readers cannot enjoy all that he has ever written. The future is now!
The Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean passed away in 1987. During his life he produced some thirty highly successful thrillers. Around 1980, MacLean was commissioned to write a series of story outlines to be subsequently developed for television and the first story would become Air Force One is Down. MacLean managed to write eight storylines featuring a fictional UN agency called United Nations Anti-Crime Organization (UNACO). Though MacLean owned the rights to those outlines, he decided he personally did not want to develop them into full-blown novels.
[Alistair MacLean (1922-1987)]
In the end the production company decided that it was probably better to introduce the series with the second storyline, Hostage Tower. The movie, starring Peter Fonda and Maud Adams, was broadcast in the USA in 1980.
No further movies appeared until Death Train (1993) and Night Watch (1995), both starring Pierce Brosnan and Alexandra Paul, were broadcast.
But now, almost 30 years after the release of 'Night Watch', the world can still be entertained by Alistair MacLean because his novel 'Air Force One is Down' is now made into a mini-series featuring Linda Hamilton (yes, from 'The Terminator') as President Harriet Rowntree. If deemed successful, the production company Power – a name itself worthy of an Alistair MacLean novel – has announced that they plan to serialize 'Puppet on a Chain' and 'The Dark Crusader' too.
For Linda Hamilton this adaptation of a novel by Alistair MacLean is kind of a reprieve because she also starred in the movie 'The Way to Dusty Death'.
I suppose you might think that this is just some sort of quirk but no, it really looks like the stories of Alistair MacLean are given a new lease of life. Warner Bros. has recently announcedplans to remake the movie'Ice Station Zebra'. The original aired as far back as 1968 and starred Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine.
