Fitzroy Maclean

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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]

Macleans Toast Chief on His 100th Birthday". Chicago Tribune. 19 May 1935 . Retrieved 6 March 2009. Ended Feud With Campbells". The New York Times. 23 November 1936. Fought in Crimean War Colonel Sir Fitzroy Donald MacLean would have celebrated his fifty-third anniversary as chief of the Clan MacLean in December. ... 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.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". Cairo in early-Dec 1943 was the right place at the right time. Both Churchill and F.D. Roosevelt were there, on their return journey from Tehran. Maclean and Deakin went to the Prime Minister's villa out by the Pyramids. He was still in bed, "smoking a cigar and wearing an embroidered dressing-gown" and questioned Maclean if he had parachuted wearing a kilt, before moving onto more a pressing issue of Yugoslav fight. Churchill confirmed that he had read Maclean's report and together with all other available information had discussed it with Stalin and Roosevelt. Finally, the three had decided to give all-out support to the partisans. The question of continuing support to Chetnik forces was raised by the British officers attached to their formations who advised that Chetniks' resistance is not solid, their troops ill-disciplined and their commanders collaborating more or less openly with the enemy. In short, their contribution to the Allied cause was by now little or nothing. Their commander, General Mihailović, was given a last chance to blow two railway bridges on the strategic Belgrade to Salonika railway. If he failed to carry out the operation by an agreed date of 29 Dec 1943, [40] the missions would be withdrawn and the supplies to Chetniks would cease. Indeed, that was the final outcome. [41]

At the wars end, Maclean returned to Britain where he was a long-time Conservative Member of Parliament, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for War, and a traveler and author of a plethora of books. His autobiography, Eastern Approaches, published in 1949 describes his travels in Central Asia and the Soviet Union during the 1930s and his wartime adventures in Yugoslavia during WWII. Pre rata, pod imenom Safford Cripps je radio u britanskoj ambasadi u Moskvi. [3] Drugi svetski rat u Jugoslaviji [ uredi | uredi kod ] Fitzroy MacLean na Visu 1944. godine.

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He married Veronica Nell Fraser-Phipps (1920–2005), a Roman Catholic, in 1946. She was the daughter of the 16th Lord Lovat and widow of naval hero Lt. Alan Phipps, who was killed ashore at Leros in 1943. Sir Fitzroy and Lady Maclean had two sons: Charles Edward (born 1946) and Alexander James Simon Aeneas ("Jamie"; born 1949), who were brought up in their mother's faith. [ citation needed] Charles is an author, well known for dark thrillers, including the cult classic The Watcher. [17] Jamie became an art dealer and founded the Erotic Review. [18] Maclean's team flew to Italy and crossed the Adriatic in a motor-torpedo-boat passing by two British Navy Hunt Class destroyers, and realising the higher attention that the area was now receiving. They arrived at Vela Luka on the island of Korčula and off-loaded the arms and ammunition that they brought with them. By now, the Germans have taken over the neighbouring Pelješac peninsula and started exchanging of shell-fire across a narrow strait that separated them. It became obvious that Korčula could not be held for much longer, and that the preparation for the evacuation onto the island of Vis, the farthest away from the mainland, should start. Once on Vis, Maclean and the team inspected the island and realised that its main valley would make an ideal airfield. [44] Having an ability to base or refuel there would extend the Allied air-power range across the whole of Adriatic and deep into Yugoslavia. However, they needed to garrison the island, and while the partisans offered one brigade, another one had to be found from the Allied 15th Army Group still fighting in central Italy. Maclean and R Churchill returned to Bari to consider their options. [45] The negotiations that followed were called the Naples Conference, with Tito, Velebit and Olga on one side of the table and Churchill and Maclean on the other. Churchill was happy to give this matter his personal attention, and, Maclean says, he did it very well. One day the two leaders were taking a rest, having handed things over to a committee of experts, when a matter arose required Churchill's immediate attention. Maclean was sent to find him; he was believed to be bathing in the Bay of Naples. When they got to the shore, they saw the huge flotilla of troopships setting off for the south of France ( Operation Dragoon), and a small bright blue admiral's barge dodging around them. Maclean was assigned a little torpedo boat, complete with a cautious captain and an attractive stenographer. It zoomed after the barge, eventually catching up with the prime minister, who found Maclean and his crew's arrival a source of much hilarity. They are welcome to join you in the Bar area, but not in our Lounges, MacPhunns Bistro or the Loch Fyne Dining room.

Our MacPhunn’s Bar & Bistro offers a fantastic locally sourced seasonal menu with dishes such as Hand Dived Loch Fyne Scallops and local estate venison. Relax in the bar with a dram by the fire after dinner or take a walk down to the shore to watch the sun slip over the horizon. In Bugojno, by now largely in ruins, Maclean noticed a group of Domobran POWs, who were "miserable troops...took the first opportunity of deserting or let themselves be taken prisoner" and whom "partisans regarded with good-natured toleration". [24] He then met up with Koča Popović (35), the commander of Partisan First Corps, who made quite an impression: Posted to Moscow as a young diplomat before the Second World War, Fitzroy Maclean travelled widely, with or without permission, in some of the wildest and remotest parts of the Soviet Union, then virtually closed to foreigners. In 1942 he fought as a founder member of the SAS in North Africa. There Maclean specialised in hair-raising commando raids behind enemy lines, including the daring and outrageous kidnapping of the German Consul in Axis-controlled Iraq. In 1943 he parachuted into German-occupied Yugoslavia as Winston Churchill's personal representative to Josip Broz Tito and remained there until 1945, all enemy attempts to capture him proving unsuccessful. After the war, Charles Maclean went on, "the moment when Tito defied Stalin was a very important moment for world history, and some would say that my father had influenced Tito through the years they knew each other, but others would say that's overrated."The discussion moved onto Chetniks, and possible renewed co-operation between the two forces, which by now seemed impossible. Tito mentioned his initial meetings with Col Mihailović (50), but realised that his troops had become too undisciplined and demoralised from long inaction, and had gone too far in their collaboration with the enemy. He then introduced Father Vlado (40), a Serbian Orthodox priest, who had left chetniks to join the partisans and who in addition to the usual red star, wore a gold cross as his cap badge. They discussed the future of the young King Peter II of Yugoslavia (20), still exiled in London. At a suggestion that the king might return to join the partisans, Tito replied that he could come as a soldier and not as a reigning sovereign, as the question of the future form of government would be settled after the war was over. Finally, Maclean asked if Tito's new Yugoslavia would be an independent state or part of the Soviet Union, the response surprised him somewhat: "You must remember the sacrifices which we are making in this struggle for our independence. Hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs have suffered torture and death, men, women and children. Vast areas of our countryside have been laid waste. You need not suppose that we shall lightly cast aside a prize which has been won at such cost." [13] Maclean was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Lancaster in the 1941 by-election. He was re-elected from Lancaster in 1945, 1950, 1951, and 1955. He served briefly as a junior minister at the War Office from 1954 to 1957. [ citation needed] Harold Macmillan regretted losing him, "but he is really so hopeless in the House that he is a passenger in office ... a great pity, since he is so able." [14] John Marsham Maclean (24 October 1879 – 4 November 1901), killed in action in the Boer War at the age of 22. A sinister part was being played in all this by a certain General Zahidi," who was thought to be in cahoots with tribal leaders and in touch with German agents in the hills, Sir Fitzroy recalled. He wangled his way into the general's house and in his book tells what happened next: