RIP: Alan Maclean After his defection Donald had broken his silence with a telegram in 1956; and in 1983, a month before his brother's death, Alan visited him in Moscow (at the airport, "we held hands rather shyly, like children"); Donald was amazed by his youngest brother's grey hair, and they spent three days reminiscing about their childhood. Alan Maclean(Filed: 02/10/2006)Alan Maclean, who died on September 26 aged 81, was a successful and much loved publisher of the old school, and the younger brother of Donald Maclean, the Soviet agent who decamped to Moscow in 1951 along with Guy Burgess.</p>
As the editorial director of Macmillan, Maclean was never at home with the more actuarial aspects of publishing, preferring to rely instead on intuition, enthusiasm and innate good taste. He helped to advance the careers of Muriel Spark, CP Snow, Rebecca West, Lillian Hellman, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Alistair Horne and Joyce Grenfell.
Maclean had earlier embarked on a career as a diplomat. Although, later, he always defended his brother in public, Donald's defection brought that career to an end; and ever afterwards Alan would be referred to, behind his back at least, as the brother of the famous spy.
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