Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably The Guns of Navarone (1957) and Ice Station Zebra (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film Where Eagles Dare, which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time.

Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 action adventure war thriller spy film directed by Brian G. Hutton and starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. It follows a Special Operations Executive team of men attempting to save a captured American General from the fictional Schloß Adler fortress, except the mission turns out not to be as it seems. It was filmed in Panavision using the Metrocolor process, and was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Alistair MacLean wrote the screenplay, his first, at the same time that he wrote the novel of the same name. Both became commercial successes.