MACLEAN, SIR FITZROY• 319with Burgess in Moscow, where he remained until his death in 1983.
See alsoMACLEAN, MELINDA.MACLEAN, SIR FITZROY.Born in Cairo, Fitzroy Maclean was ed-
ucated at Eton and in 1928 won a scholarship to read modern lan-
guages at King’s College, Cambridge, before joining the Foreign
Office. In 1934 he was sent to Paris and then in 1937, at his own
request, was posted to Moscow. Back in London in September 1939
he resigned from the Foreign Office to be elected the Conservative
MP for Lancaster and joined the Cameron Highlanders as a private.
In August 1941, having been promoted to lieutenant, Maclean
joined the newly formedSpecial Air Service(SAS), and in 1943
he was parachuted intoYugoslaviaas the prime minister’s personal
representative to the partisans. This proved to be a turning point for
Special Operations Executivein Yugoslavia, in both military and
political terms. Maclean instantly took to Tito, as he wrote in his au-
tobiography,Eastern Approaches. He came with the status ofWin-
ston Churchill’s emissary, and in so doing gave de facto recognition
to Tito’s ascent overDraza Mihailovic. Unlike the ramshackle head-
quarters run by Brigadier Armstrong, Colonel Hudson, and Major
Jack, Maclean’s organization boasted an astonishing elite of the Brit-
ish military establishment, complete with experienced SAS officers,
expert sappers and commandos, separate lines of communications,
and a network of sub-missions spread across the country. Maclean’s
staff had direct access to the very highest levels inCairoand London
and also included, at one moment in 1944, Evelyn Waugh and Ran-
dolph Churchill. Waugh witnessed the lack of logistical support
given to the British military missions and noted that in Glina the local
British liaison officer was ‘‘in a rage about the miscarriage of his sup-
plies.... It was plain from the figures he gave us that supplies are
sent haphazard as they become available without reference to the la-
boriously prepared tables of priority.’’
After the Liberation, Maclean took up residence in Belgrade, his
military mission having been transformed into more of a diplomatic
one with his staff, fresh from the mountains, turning their hands to
more mundane, administrative matters. He formed a lifelong friend-
ship with Tito, who gave him a home on the island of Korcula, and
at the end of the war returned to politics and remained in the House