[1] His father, a sheet-metal worker on the Clyde who had moved south to find work, was latterly a foreman at the Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering shipyards in Barrow.
[1][2] McLean served in the Royal Air Force in the Mediterranean and North Africa during World War Two, later writing about his experiences of time spent in a military prison in his 1968 novel The Glasshouse.
[2] In addition to his published novels he also earned a living as a journalist, and in the 1970s wrote a column for the short-lived publication 7 Days, where he was vocal in his opposition to Scottish devolution and support for prison reform, agitating in particular for the closure of the notorious "cage" at HM Prison Inverness.
[4] Although McLean never seriously harboured parliamentary ambitions, he had previously been the Labour candidate for Inverness at the 1964 and 1966 general elections.
The author Naomi Mitchison said of McLean that "Nobody handles Gaelic speech and thought better... and few get going better with anger and action.