Major-General Sir Fitzroy Hew Royle Maclean, 1st Baronet, (11 March 1911 – 15 June 1996) was a Scottish soldier, writer and politician. He was a Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) from 1941 to 1974 and was one of only two men who during the Second World War enlisted in the British Army as a private and rose to the rank of brigadier, the other being future fellow Conservative MP Enoch Powell. Maclean wrote several books, including Eastern Approaches, in which he recounted three extraordinary series of adventures: travelling, often incognito, in Soviet Central Asia; fighting in the Western Desert campaign, where he specialised in commando raids behind enemy lines; and living rough with Josip Broz Tito and his Yugoslav Partisans while commanding the Maclean Mission there. It has been widely speculated that Ian Fleming used Maclean as one of his inspirations for James Bond. Early life Maclean was born in Cairo to Major Charles Wilberforce Maclean QOCH (1875–1953), a member of the Scottish landed gentry serving in Egypt with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, and Frances Elaine Gladys Royle (12 June 1882 – 1954), the only daughter of George Royle, a Royal Navy officer, and Fannie Jane Longueville Snow. The couple wed on 12 July 1905 at St George's Parish, Hanover Square, Middlesex, London. Heritage and education He was descended from the Macleans of Ardgour, a Sept of the Clan Maclean, whose chiefs have as their historic seat Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. He was brought up in Italy and educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and History. He then studied in Germany before joining the Diplomatic Service in 1933. In the Soviet Union In 1934 Fitzroy Maclean was posted to the British Embassy in Paris. Bored with the pleasant but undemanding routine, he requested a posting to Moscow in 1937. The two and a half years he spent in the Soviet Union formed the first third of his best known book, the autobiographical Eastern Approaches. Maclean was in Moscow until late 1939, and was present during the great Stalinist purges, observing the fates of Bukharin and other Russian revolutionaries. Although he was stationed in the capital, Maclean travelled extensively, primarily by train, into remote regions of the USSR which were off limits to foreigners, and was shadowed by the NKVD as he did so. World War II When