Donald H MacLean
a profile commissioned for a BBC internal publication
Then, in the early nineties, uneasy about the mismatch between personal web-sites and the internet's global reach, he created a web-site for the Clan Maclean, a senior Scots family dispersed, for historic reasons, across the globe. A decade later it has more than 3,000 registered members. Typically he also recruited an expert team to run it and its forums (these 'keeper-cousins' are located in Belgium, New Zealand, Florida, Carolina, Seattle, Hawaii and Glasgow) and has handed the reins to them, proud to have another "Founder and Honorary President" certificate among the trophies in his den.
"I have promised my memoirs to a publisher in New York" he says, "now, like me, she's in her eighties. She’s also endlessly patient". She needs to be, having already waited thirty years and with no prospect of launching anytime soon the elaborate publicity she envisages. "I still love writing" says Donald "and I have had more than my share of publicity. Although I regularly stand at the top of the stairs wondering what I came up for, I can clearly recall watching a Baird TV set 76 years ago! And that memory triggers another one - and so on. Anyway I always spend more time looking forward than back. Ann and I (and our 2 Golden Retrievers) are planning a new home we’ve just bought - we’re designing a revolutionary heat-pump system. Lord Reith said that by accepting challenges beyond the ordinary I might enjoy extraordinary fulfilment ... I believe I do ... and I have."