Allan Campbell McLean


Allan Campbell McLean was a British writer and political activist.

Biography

McLean was born on Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness, then in Lancashire, but he lived in Scotland for many years. His father was a foreman at the Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering shipyards in Barrow.
He served in the Royal Air Force in the Mediterranean and North Africa in World War Two, later writing about his experiences of time spent in a military prison in his 1968 novel The Glass House. After the war he turned to writing. He was also involved in the Scottish Labour Party for several years, serving on the Scottish executive, and was the Labour candidate in Inverness at the 1964 and 1966 general elections. He wrote a column for the short-lived publication 7 Days in the late 1970s, where he was vocal in his opposition to devolution, and support for prison reform, particularly opposition to the notorious "cage" at HM Prison Inverness.

Works

He is the writer of a number of the children's novels: The Hill of the Red Fox , Ribbon of Fire, Master of Morgana, The Year of the Stranger, The Man of the House, and A Sound of Trumpets. Some of his books have been translated into German.