Photo: Popperfoto via Getty Images (1960)
Sample of authors
MacLean, Alistair
The Scottish author Alistair Stuart MacLean was born in Shettleston, Glasgow, in a Gaelic-speaking family as Alasdair MacGill-Eain (his Gaelic name was anglicised by the British authorities). His father was a Church of Scotland minister. While the author was still a baby, the family moved to a farm near Daviot in the Highlands. After the death of his father, his mother returned to Glasgow with...
Literary figures
Charlie Muffin
Gender: Male
He was recruited by the British Intelligence Service already in the 1950s and since then has been a spy in a long suite of well-written, satirical novels by Brian Freemantle. But Charlie Muffin is no super-agent: he is shabby and looks so ordinary that nobody notices him. His bosses try to sacrifice him several times, and he is sometimes hunted just as eagerly by his own side as by the Russians.