Macdonald Hastings

Macdonald Hastings (1909–4 October 1982), journalist, author and war correspondent.

Douglas Edward Macdonald Hastings (known as Macdonald Hastings) was born in London, England and was educated at Stonyhurst College, a Roman Catholic Jesuit school in Lancashire. He became war correspondent for "Picture Post" during the Second World War, sending despatches from north-west Europe. He married Anne Scott-James, distinguished columnist and later magazine editor, and was father of Sir Max Hastings, journalist and newspaper editor.

Hastings was an occasional contributor of fiction to "Lilliput", the literary magazine, under the pseudonym of "Lemuel Gulliver". He was editor of the "Strand Magazine" between 1946 and 1950, after which he was recruited by Rev Marcus Morris to write for a new boys' comic, "The Eagle", which he did from 1951, filing reports from far-flung parts of the world under the title of "Eagle Special Correspondent". He was also co-founder and editor of the fortnightly "Country Fair" magazine.

He also wrote around thirty books, on subjects such as game shooting, was author of a series of detective novels and appeared on television as a weekly correspondent on the BBC programme "Tonight" in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

He died at his home in Basingstoke in 1982.