My father, John Airs, who has died of cancer aged 81, was a drama teacher who inspired lifelong devotion from his pupils. He was also an active and campaigning socialist, and one of the Guardian’s more prolific letter writers.
Born in Edinburgh, John was only three when his father, Wilf, an RAF navigator, was shot down over France during the second world war, leaving his schoolteacher mother, Mary (nee Ward), to raise him and his younger sister, Kathleen.
