Every week we'll highlight facts about famous Glaswegians.

Here's five facts about Alistair MacLean:

1 SUPREME storyteller and master of suspense Alistair MacLean, who was born and educated in Glasgow, wrote many popular thrillers of war and adventure, including The Guns Of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra. He was born in the manse in Shettleston, and went to Hillhead School.

2 Born in April 1922, he spent a great deal of his childhood in Daviot in the Highlands, where his father was the parish minister.

3 In 1941, at the age of 19, he joined the Royal Navy, serving on a number of ships which saw action in the North Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean, before being posted to the Far East towards the end of the war. His book HMS Ulysses was based on his wartime service – it started life as the winning entry in a short story competition run by the Glasgow Times’ sister newspaper, The Herald. He was persuaded by Ian Chapman of Collins, the publishers, to try a novel. In total, MacLean wrote 29 books, which sold millions of copies worldwide and many were made into movies, including the famous Where Eagles Dare in 1968. He wrote two books under the pseudonym Ian Stuart, and biographies of Lawrence of Arabia and Captain Cook.

4 MacLean ran a hotel in England in the 1960s, but increasingly lived in Switzerland in later life. He married twice and had three sons.

5 The Glasgow University graduate, who became an English teacher (he once taught at Gallowflat School in Rutherglen) before he found fame as one of the country’s finest novelists, was just 64 when he died in 1987, a few weeks after suffering a stroke while visiting a friend in Munich. He is buried at Céligny in Switzerland, by coincidence quite close to the last resting place of Richard Burton, one of the stars of Where Eagles Dare.