Scotland is in lockdown. Shops are closing and newspaper sales are falling fast. We're not exaggerating when we say that the future of the Clydebank Post is under threat.

Please consider supporting the Post in whatever way you can – by paying just 85p for a copy of the paper, when you're shopping for essential supplies for yourself and others, or by subscribing to our e-edition here.

Thanks – and stay safe.

JOHN McKie was a long-serving and inspirational teacher of Latin and Greek at Hutchesons’ Grammar School, and, as Myops, compiler of crosswords for The Herald; the originator of the Wee Stinker, he wrote what was described as “the most fiendishly difficult crossword in a British newspaper”.

He spent almost all of his working life as head of the classics department at “Hutchie”; at the time of his retirement, Radio 4 made a programme in which he described his approach to teaching, and provided snippets of him engaging with pupils, which he described as a joy.

“I try to answer the questions they ask, rather than tell them what I think they ought to know,” he said.

His focus was entirely on the classroom, where his Socratic approach could inspire admiration and devotion.

Though an advocate of Classics as an unrivalled training for clarity of thought, understanding of culture and as a civilising influence, he relished above all the structure of the languages and their capacity for beauty.

John Stewart McKie was born on October 11, 1939 at Innellan, where his mother Mary, always known as Maisie, had been evacuated with his older brother Roy and sister Isobel.

He was the third of five children; his father James Stewart McKie was a flooring contractor and put carpets in the Queen Mary.

Read more: Two arrested for COVID-19 related offences in Clydebank as woman 'coughs on officer'

After the war, the family returned to Glasgow, settling in Knightswood. John attended Garscadden Primary, where his ability was identified by the headmaster, who suggested to his mother that he would benefit from an academic environment, advising he be sent to Hutchesons’.

Isobel had a hip condition, and was sent to dancing lessons to aid her mobility; she insisted her younger brothers, John and Stewart, were also made to attend. They became accomplished dancers, and picked up chorus work.

John, whose profound Christian faith was central to his life, attended Knightswood Congregational Church and met his wife Lorna at its Sunday School.

To subsidise his classics studies at university, he had various jobs, including working on a delivery van for the brewers Whitbread, taking the night shift in a garage, fuelling and sweeping buses, and regularly working as a guide for Caledonian Tours, taking visitors round Scotland on a coach.

He worked as a supply teacher at various schools, including stints at Larkhall Academy and Mount Vernon, before a chance encounter with Bob Eadie, who had taught him Greek, led to a job at his old school.

He took over as department head not long afterwards, where he remained until retiring in 2005; his wife also taught at the school, in the infants’ department and latterly as deputy rector.

All five of his own children went there, and his daughter Jane is a current member of staff.

For many years, he was an elder at St George’s Tron Church. In the 1970s he bought and restored a former Congregational church hall in Corrie, on Arran, where the family spent their summer holidays, and he made inept attempts to learn to sail.

He also conducted services at the Congregational church at Sannox, which he helped to preserve.

McKie, as Myops, started producing crosswords for The Herald in 1979, and for more than 40 years was responsible for the Saturday prize puzzle.

In 1988 the then editor, Arnold Kemp, proposed swapping the difficulty of the Monday crosswords (traditionally the easiest cryptic of the week), and making the small grid a “Wee Stinker”.

He continued to compose the puzzles until the last week of his illness. Myops also contributed elsewhere, and was a regular setter of The Daily Telegraph’s “Toughie” for several years.

With his pipe, mildly eccentric dress sense and vintage Rover, he fitted many people’s idea of the archetypal schoolmaster and after retirement found further opportunities to teach.

He is survived by his wife Lorna and their five children.