Word: macleans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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ESCAPE TO ADVENTURE (419 pp.)-Flfzroy Maclean-Little, Brown...
...city of Lancaster (pop. 50,250) has lost most of the glamour and importance that clung to its name in the days of John of Gaunt and the Wars of the Roses. But it cherishes today one spectacular bloom in the person of its dashing Tory M.P., Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, 39, whose recently published bestseller, Eastern Approaches, has made its author one of the most popular political figures in the United Kingdom...
...Escape to Adventure, Scotsman Maclean's book is likely to repeat its success in the U.S. It belongs to that special category of letters wherein the British, led by the great T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, have excelled through two world wars- the crisp, lively, unimpassioned military-diplomatic memoir. Moreover, Escape to Adventure has a highly topical fascination in that it reflects the destiny of today's would-be lone ranger: try as he may to make his adventurous career a personal affair, he is pretty likely to wind up half lost in a huge crowd, becoming...
...with White Ties. This destiny was invisible to Fitzroy Maclean when, in 1936, aged 25, he sat sullenly at a British embassy desk in Paris and decided that he had already had a bellyful of life as a conventional diplomat-"those pinstriped suits from Scholte; those blue and white shirts, from Beale and Inman, with their starched collars . . . big official dinner parties, with white ties and decorations . . ." Rushing to diplomacy's opposite extreme, Maclean became "the first member of the service" ever to plead to be transferred to "such a notoriously unpleasant post" as the British embassy in Moscow...
From this tough base Maclean set out to enjoy himself. Between 1937 and 1939, dressed in an old suit and carrying a rucksack, he explored thousands of miles of the Soviet Union, all the way from the Urals to the borders of Chinese Sinkiang and Afghanistan. Maclean broke into many a forbidden area by the simple expedient of quietly climbing aboard the appropriate train. Provincial units of the NKVD were often too bewildered by Maclean's sudden appearances to know just what to do about him. When they put agents on his trail, Maclean went complacently about his sightseeing...