By the end of the year, the war had developed in such a way that the new SAS detachment would not be needed in Persia. General Wilson was being transferred to Middle East Command, and Maclean extracted a promise that the newly trained troops would go with him, as their style of commando raids were ideal for southern and eastern Europe. Frustrated by the abandoning of plans for an assault on Crete, Maclean went to see Reginald Leeper, "an old friend from Foreign Office days, and now His Majesty's Ambassador to the Greek Government then in exile in Cairo". Leeper put in a word for him, and very soon Maclean was told to go to London to get his instructions directly from the prime minister. Churchill told him to parachute into Jugoslavia (now spelled Yugoslavia) as head of a military mission accredited to Josip Broz Tito (a shadowy figure at that point) or whoever was in charge of the Partisans, the Communist-led resistance movement. Mihajlovic's royalist Cetniks (now spelled Chetniks), which the Allies had been supporting, did not appear to be fighting the Germans very hard, and indeed were said to be collaborating with the enemy. Maclean famously paraphrased Churchill: "My task was simply to help find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more." The prime minister saw Maclean as "a daring Ambassador-leader to these hardy and hunted guerillas". Eastern Approaches is Maclean's classic, gripping account of the sybaritic delights of diplomatic life, the thrill of remote travel in the then-forbidden zones of Central Asia, and the violence and adventure of world-changing tours in North Africa and Yugoslavia. Maclean is the original British action hero and this is blistering reading. Describing his time with Tito and the Yugoslav Partisan movement, Maclean once said, “To some people, my life might seem one long adventure holiday, blowing up forts in the desert, clandestinely parachuting into guerrilla wars, penetrating forbidden cities deep behind closed frontiers.” He later went on to pen two autobiographies about Tito in which his admiration for Yugoslavia’s war-time leader and later President is abundantly evident, as was his admiration for the people of Yugoslavia and Croatians in particular. RSGS Deakin, F. W. D. (2011). The Embattled Mountain. London: Faber and Faber Ltd. ISBN 978-0-571-27644-8.

Veteran of WWII. In 1941, he chose to enlist as a private in the Cameron Highlanders, but was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant the same year. He was one of the earliest members of the elite SAS. By the end of the war, had risen to the rank of Brigadier. Maclean wrote several books, including Eastern Approaches, in which he recounted three extraordinary series of adventures: traveling, often incognito, in Soviet Central Asia; fighting in the Western Desert Campaign (1941-1943), where he specialized in commando raids (with the Special Air Service Regiment) behind enemy lines; and living rough with Josip Broz Tito and his Yugoslav Partisans. It has been widely speculated that Ian Fleming used Maclean as one of his inspirations for James Bond.You hereby agree that we may assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with our rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.

Once more in the Soviet capital, he reported on purge trials for the British Foreign Office and won admiration for his skill in summarizing and appraising their causes and effects. So, who was Sir Fitzroy Maclean? Born in 1911 in Cairo, Egypt, to Charles Maclean, a major in the British army, and Gladys Royle Maclean, he was raised in Scotland, India, and Italy and attended Eton (1924-28), the University of Marburg (1929), and Kings’ College, Cambridge (1929-32). He entered the Foreign Office in 1934 and was first posted to Paris, and then to Moscow in 1937 where he served as the Third Secretary in the British Embassy. Stalin’s purges were at their height during Maclean’s two years in the Soviet Union, and he was present at the state trial of Nikolai Bukharin in 1938. He also made journeys to remote areas of the Soviet Union and parts of Central Asia where few foreigners had ever stepped foot in. At the outset of war in 1939 he returned to London where he embarked on a career with the Foreign Office as a Russian affairs desk officer. If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect.Maclean was Executive Chair (1959-1970) and later President (1977-1987) of the GB-USSR Association. The Association, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO], was a semi-official organization for cultural relations with the Soviet Union. [15] The Creggans Inn is an historic building and today offers a characterful place to relax and unwind on the shores of Loch Fyne. The Inn has received multiple awards over the years, most recently named Scottish Inn of the Year in 2014. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had been formed in 1922, after the Russian Revolution had brutally disposed of the Tsar and his family. The Communist party, led by Vladimir Lenin, took control of the government, and shortly after Lenin’s death a new dictator, Joseph Stalin, set about making the Soviet Union a superpower. Stalin’s policies were horrifying. The ‘Great Purge’ resulted in the execution of around 600,000 people, and many more were sent to labour camps or succumbed to famine. For Soviet citizens, even minor transgressions from Communist ideology were punishable by death. In Moscow, foreign embassy officials were tolerated, even respected, but their movements were closely monitored and it was considered dangerous to socialise with them. In the late 1960s, Maclean bought the Palazzo Boschi villa on the Adriatic island of Korčula (present-day Croatia), [24] where he spent a good part of each year. [25]

Ford station-wagon with SAS officers (L to R): Reg Seekings, Johnny Rose, David Stirling, Johnny Cooper. Milivoj (5 June 2002). "Škotska lady koja obožava Tita i Mesića"[Scottish Lady who Adores Tito and Mesić]. Nacional (weekly) (in Croatian). No.342. Archived from the original on 2 January 2014. I defy anyone to read Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches and not want to go to mysterious Central Asia. From the moment I read those seductive first paragraphs as a student, I was drawn to the murky world of Bokhara, Samarkand and Tashkent that Maclean observed at close quarters in the 1930s when working as a diplomat in our Moscow embassy. It was to be ten years before I travelled to the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan in the ‘year of stagnation’ – 1975 – and another three decades before I saw the country without the dubious assistance of a Soviet minder.

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Sir Fitzroy's arrival by parachute in Yugoslavia was in 1943 after Churchill had written to his Foreign Secretary: "Mr. Fitzroy Maclean, M.P., is a man of daring character, with Foreign Office training. He is to go to Yugoslavia and work with Tito. What we want is a daring Ambassador-leader with these hardy and hunted guerrillas."