Alistair Stuart MacLean was born on 28 April 1922 in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother, Mary Lamont MacLean, a deeply religious woman, was also a prizewinning singer. His father, also named Alistair MacLean, was a Church of Scotland minister. A writer himself, the Reverend MacLean published books of Christian meditations, most notably High Country (1928) and Hebridean Altars: The Spirit of an Island Race (1937), which was republished in 1999. Young Alistair was the couple's third child. He had two older brothers, Lachlan and Ian. A younger brother, Gilleasbuig (known as Gillespie), was born in 1926. Soon after Alistair's birth, the family moved to the country district of Daviot, six miles south of Inverness.
The MacLeans were Gaelic speakers. At his father's insistence, Alistair did not learn English until he was seven and spoke only Gaelic at home until the age of fifteen. He was educated at the local primary school in Daviot. In his 1991 biography of the novelist, Jack Webster records that the MacLean brothers wore kilts to school and went barefoot all summer and that Alistair's first teacher, Barbara Mackintosh, recalled Alistair as "a quiet little boy who gave me no trouble."
In 1936, when Alistair was fourteen, his father died.
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