Brian Callison
◆ Born storyteller whose acclaimed adventure yarns were driven by his love of all things nautical
On publication of Brian Callison’s first book, A Flock Of Ships, the celebrated author Alistair Maclean declared the novel the best war story he had ever read.
Praise indeed, considering Maclean, one of the world’s best-selling fiction authors, had already written blockbusters The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare.
But when Callison produced Trapp’s War four years later Maclean had to reassess: “This must be Brian Callison’s best book. It is even better than A Flock Of Ships and I didn't think he could achieve this. I didn't think anyone could... there can be no better adventure writer today.”
Callison went on to write a total of 22 books, translated into 12 languages including Japanese, Finnish and Icelandic and selling 750,000 paperbacks by 1978 – all the more remarkable since he started his working life not as a novelist but in the Merchant Navy.
Born in Manchester, to Tom Callison and his wife Kitty, he grew up in Dundee after his father, who was made an MBE for services to electrical engineering, moved north to take up a job with Bonar Long electrical plant manufacturers. Callison attended Monifieth Primary and Dundee High Schools and, despite disliking school, won a writing competition run by a national newspaper.
However, he left school as soon as he could, inspired to go to sea by his uncle, a chief engineer on merchant ships during the North Atlantic convoys of the Second World War who had survived three sinkings by German U-boats.
The young Callison was a midshipman on the Blue Funnel Line and travelled throughout the southern hemisphere.
While on leave in 1952 he met his future wife Phyllis and left the Merchant Navy the following year, enrolling at Dundee College of Art where he studied silversmithing.
Then from 1956 to 1964 he ran a small art and furniture business, CB Studios, with college friend Gordon Bell. On acquiring a joinery business in Broughty Ferry, the firm became Portnacraig Construction.
In the early 1960s Callison also served in the Territorial Army as detachment commander in Provost Company of the 51st Highland Division, Royal Military Police, and from 1964 to 1968 was general manager of Dundee’s Skyline Bowling Alley.
But Callison never lost his passion for all things nautical and during this time he joined the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service, where he served for more than 30 years, 25 of them as head of the unit, until it was disbanded in 1994.
A member of the Royal Institute of Navigation, he then served as head of the Tay Unit of the Maritime Volunteer Service.
His lifelong interest in the sea and seafarers, plus a penchant for creative writing, led to publication of A Flock of Ships in 1970.
It became a classic and proved to be the start of a whole new full-time career writing maritime thrillers. In Alastair Maclean’s view, Callison’s first book made the famous All Quiet On The Western Front “look like one of the lesser works of Enid Blyton”.
Other titles included A Ship Is Dying, The Dawn Attack, The Sextant, The Bone Collectors, A Plague Of Sailors, Ferry Down and Redcap.
His ideas and plots came primarily from his own experiences at sea and he became one of only a handful of authors to be under contract to Collins for a series of books.
Although Callison never studied writing, he loved being a writer, though he saw himself more as a storyteller than a novelist.
A very humble man, he drew great encouragement and satisfaction from the praise of established authors and critics. The New York Times described his work as “Heart-stopping suspense.”
Jockey and crime writer Dick Francis said: “Outrageously alive... his actions scenes thunder along.” And according to The Scotsman he was “bracketed with Alistair Maclean, Hammond Innes and Desmond Bagley as the master of the spreading bloodstain”.
He also took great pleasure in mentoring others. In 2005 he was appointed the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee, where he worked with the university’s Learning Enhancement Unit on their Write Right programme, helping undergraduates develop their academic and creative writing.
Relishing the opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds on a variety of academic subjects, Callison is said to have acknowledged that helping to nurture the authors of tomorrow by demystifying the writing process had been the most satisfying and rewarding achievement of his career.
He gave up writing books in 2007 following his last novel, Trapp’s Secret War, which was published the following year. He was in his seventies by that time and simply felt the time was right. He enjoyed painting and photography in retirement.
Predeceased by Phyllis, whom he married in 1958, Brian Callison is survived by their two sons Richard and Mark, two granddaughters and his great grandson.