My husband, Alan Clague, who has died aged 81, was a classics teacher who was determined to make the subject more accessible for all.
He achieved that ambition most notably as head of classics at St John’s comprehensive school in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where under his guidance more than 60 students regularly studied classics in the sixth form – numbers that were almost unheard of outside the private sector.
Alan was born in Liverpool to Thomas, a painter and decorator, and Elizabeth (nee Jones), a housewife. After Liverpool Collegiate boys’ grammar school he went to Exeter University to study classics, though for much of his time there he preferred to be playing football and drinking cider.
After graduation in 1964 he knuckled down as a classics teacher at Altrincham grammar school in Cheshire, before moving to St John’s in 1975.
In 1997 he changed direction to become a classics subject officer for the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board and then for the Eduqas board. He retired from Eduqas in 2019, but continued for them as a part-time examinations reviser until his death.
In 2008 BBC Radio 4’s Top of the Class programme, which asked famous people about their school days, interviewed Alan along with the children’s author Lauren Child, who revealed that she went to St John’s – and that he was her favourite teacher.
“I loved Latin because of him … he spoke to us as if we should all be as passionate about the subject as he was, and it worked,” she said. “Mr Clague’s lessons were inspirational [and] I have no doubt they have informed my writing.”
Alan was flattered but initially had no memory of Lauren, until it transpired that as an adult she had changed her name from Helen to Lauren – and he did remember a Helen Child.
In his spare time and retirement Alan loved to read the Guardian and the Observer from cover to cover, spending hours on their cryptic crosswords and winning prizes for completing them correctly on many occasions.
We married in 1992. He is survived by me and by a son, Tim, from his first marriage, to Sheila (nee Humphries), which ended in divorce in 1989.
