Alistair MacLean's War

Alistair MacLean’s War - How the War Shaped his Bestsellers written by Mark Simmons

and published by Pen & Sword Books - £20.00 - Hardback - Pages 208

It is no coincidence that many of Alistair MacLean's most successful novels were sea stories. In 1941, he was called up after volunteering for the Royal Navy and served as Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Leading Torpedo Operator. For the majority of his service, he was on HMS Royalist, a modified Dido-class light cruiser, seeing action in the Arctic, and operations against the German battleship Tirpitz . The ship then deployed to the Mediterranean taking part in Operation Dragoon the invasion of the South of France and later in operations against German occupied Greek Islands in the Aegean. After which MacLean and Royalist were deployed to the Indian Ocean and operations against the Japanese in Malaya, Burma, and Sumatra.

His wartime experiences coupled with exceptional literary skill resulted in the runaway success of his first novel HMS Ulysses (1955) followed by The Guns of Navarone (1957) and South by Java Head (1958). These three blockbusters cemented his position as one of the most successful and highly paid authors of the era.

While not a whole life biography, Mark Simmon’s book provides a fascinating insight into Maclean’s war service and subsequent works, which deserve enduring popularity.

I have to admit my father was a big fan of Alistair MacLean’s various books, asking him once as a teenager why he read his books, he said he enjoyed reading thrillers and really enjoyed MacLean’s books as they were about war and thriller type books. So since then, I have read a few of MacLean’s books too when wanting something easy to read, and I’m pretty sure I’ve read The Guns of Navarone and a few others after that. Like my father, I enjoyed these books too, so it was excellent to be given the chance to read and review this book.

The book, split into 21 chapters and takes a good look at MacLeans’s life mainly his life as a Naval serviceman, as we get to discover his work life, the ships he was on and some of the missions he was a part of, and you can see where he got a good few of his ideas would then go on to use in his novels. For any fans of Alistair MacLean, I’m sure they would really enjoy this book as it’s a good easy read much like the books he wrote himself.