Alistair MacLean — an Sgeulaiche

A documentary in Gaelic, with some English

In 2025, I discovered on YouTube a 2021 documentary titled Alistair MacLean — An Sgeulaiche [The Storyteller]. That’s the good news. The somewhat less good news is that the narration is in Gaelic, with English subtitles. 

However, if you’re not fluent in Gaelic, don’t keep your speaker off when watching this hour-long film. It includes quite a few interesting video clips of English-language interviews with MacLean from the 1970s, as well as input from a handful of other people who were close to him, such as his publisher Ian Malcolm and his author niece Shona. 

The film presents good information about some of the key points of MacLean’s writing career, starting with his first prize in a Glasgow Herald short-story contest and the subsequent sensational success of his first novel, HMS Ulysses. We learn about the writing and filming of some of his other tales, but certainly not all of them. His private life is also examined, with frank assessments of his troubles and shortcomings as well as his strengths.  

Here are some insights I found informative and/or entertaining (the film contains many other worthwhile tidbits): 

• MacLean, on his postwar career as a student at Glasgow University: “Honestly, it was the most time-wasting period of my entire life. I spent seven years in university and learned nothing.” 
• On creating his short story that brought him the Herald’s 100-pound prize: “I was not inspired; I was driven by financial necessity.” 
• On his aim as a writer: “I don’t write for myself. Many authors, if you can dignify myself and these others with that term, write for themselves. I write for my public.” 
• Another interviewee, quoting what someone had said about MacLean’s style: “Throw everything but the kitchen sink at the reader, then throw the kitchen sink at the reader, then throw the plumber at the reader.” 

The only aspect of this documentary that rubbed me the wrong way was the intermittent insertion of shots of a young actor delivering lines from MacLean’s novels. I found those bits overly dramatized and cloying. 

Overall, though, I think any MacLean fan will find the film to be an hour well spent. You should be able to find it by doing a title search on YouTube.