Inner Hebrides
The poet Sorley MacLean was born on Raasay, the setting for his best known poem, "Hallaig". George Orwell wrote much of the novel "1984" whilst living at Barnhill on Jura and J.M. Barrie wrote a screenplay for the 1924 film adaptation of "Peter Pan" whilst on Eilean Shona. Cressida Cowell, the author of "How to Train Your Dragon", spent childhood summers in the Inner Hebrides and has stated that they are "one of the most beautiful places on Earth" and "the kind of place where you expect to see dragons overhead".
Denis McLean
The eldest son of Gordon McLean, a newspaper editor, and Ruahine Smith, McLean was born in Napier; his family later lived in Auckland and Wellington. He attended Nelson College from 1944 to 1948, took an M.Sc (1st class) in geology at Victoria University of Wellington and won a Senior Scholarship in 1953 and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in 1954. At University College in Oxford he studied politics, philosophy and economics. He played rugby at both Victoria and Oxford Universities, and was a member of the Victoria team that won the Jubilee Cup three times in the early 1950s.