Alistair Maclean (Alistair Stuart Maclean) Biography

British popular novelist, born in Glasgow, educated at the University of Glasgow. His first novel, H.M.S. Ulysses (1955), was a bestseller; briskly narrated, it celebrates the endurance of the men who risked their lives on the hazardous ‘Murmansk run’, during the Second World War, to supply Soviet Russia. Most of his many books are witty adventure thrillers, many of which have been made into blockbuster Hollywood films. His best-known works include The Guns of Navarone (1957), South by Java Head (1958), Fear is the Key (1961), Ice Station Zebra (1963), and Where Eagles Dare (1967). Commando operations feature prominently in many of the novels, most notably in Force 10 from Navarone (1968) and Partisans (1982), both of which ingeniously exploit the complex allegiances of Yugoslav guerrilla factions during the Second World War.