I promised a fuller tribute to the great publisher and person, Alan Maclean. Our archivist, Alysoun Sanders, has written this piece with links to some of the obituaries.
Alan Maclean, who died last month, aged 81, is well remembered by colleagues and others in the publishing world for his kindness, his wit, his charm and courtesy as well as for his positive influence on the success of Macmillan during the 30 years he worked for the company.
Alan started at Macmillan in 1954, when Dan Macmillan (“Mr Dan”) was Chairman of the company and the Macmillan building in St Martin’s St was, as he described it, a “rabbit warren of offices, some with clerks crouched on high stools at tall ledger desks”. During Alan’s distinguished career at Macmillan he was a Director of both Macmillan & Pan Books. In 1965 he married Robin Empson, who had been his secretary. When he retired in 1984 he was credited with having a great influence on the building up of the firm.
Some of his accounts of this time, which were renowned for making old hands weak with laughter, are recorded in his book of reminiscences published in 1997: No, I tell a lie, it was the Tuesday - a title devised during an editorial meeting in the 1970s as a suitable title for an outstandingly boring autobiography. His is anything but. Instead it brings life to this period of the company’s history, much of which was under the leadership of Harold Macmillan.
Colleagues have spoken of his capacity for building devoted and lasting friendships. His authors, who included many great writers of the twentieth century, became great friends and the friendship never wavered whatever their latest offering. C P Snow, Frank Tuohy, Muriel Spark, Jane Duncan, John Wain, Barbara Pym, Lilian Hellman and many others, valued him for his wisdom, humour and integrity. His opinion on editorial & publishing matters was often sought, even after he retired, by Margaret Laurence and others and he became literary executor to Rebecca West.
Fuller tributes can be found in the obituaries in The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent whose archive is unavailable to non-payers but who published an excellent piece by my former boss and mentor, Robin Denniston and by Robin Baird Smith, and from which I've extracted some quotes:
Robin first met him after he had been “shooed out of the Foreign Office” …and rescued by Billy Collins and went to work in the Glasgow factory as assistant to the deputy Chairman. Robin was a trainee there. The “two poor Englanders” were thrown together and used to eat heavy and boozy high teas with each other at his landlady’s residence.
“Muriel Spark called him ‘the best-liked editor in London’”
“He became famous as an excellent editor – not only of Muriel Spark, but of Lillian Hellman, Rebecca West, CP Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson and Joyce Grenfell. He was the heart and soul of MacmillanLondon, a much older and more prestigious firm than Collins, and became the favourite of “Mr Dan”, the elder brother of “Mr Harold”. ..
“He was a truly friendly, delightful and deeply good man”
Robin Baird Smith:
Robin Baird Smith says that it was thanks to him that he became a publisher.
“He was the last of a breed of publisher, now extinct, best described as the equivalent of the actor manager: At the heart of his personality and energy was a passionate editor of the old school. He acted on instinct and hunch, excelled at spotting new talent and kept accountants at bay. Unusually for the manager of a large publishing house, he made the people who worked for him happy. And this was his avowed intention.”
“Maclean knew talent when he saw it and backed it with relentless energy”
“His authors loved him dearly and he shared their lives”
But it is amongst his colleagues that he will be remembered as a splendid person to work with, and as a shoulder to lean on, for his ability to smile at life with a wry but affectionate air as well as his patience, and his self-deprecatory humour.He was a charming man who will go down in Macmillan folklore.