Here’s the text of the Osprey mailshot. Its author, Martin Windrow, claims this isn’t a formal obituary but to be honest it probably is the closest we’ll get…
A tribute to ANGUS McBRIDE (1931-2007)
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Angus McBride, one of the world’s most respected historical illustrators and a true friend of Osprey. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time. The news of Angus’s sudden death, on 15 May at his home near Waterford in the Republic of Ireland, has come as a terrible shock to his friends and colleagues. Everyone who knew him, professionally or privately, will wish to join me in expressing profound sadness and sympathy to his widow Patricia, to his son Ian and daughter Fiona, to his son-in-law Neil and to Angus’s two young grandsons. Angus was such a vivid and unusual personality that he leaves an aching hole in the lives of his friends and family.
This is neither the time nor place, nor am I the person, to attempt to write a formal obituary. A brief summary of the main facts about Angus’s life and work up to five years ago can be found in the Foreword to the book Warriors & Warlords. The Art of Angus McBride (Osprey, 2002). I simply want to record here a few thoughts that occur to me in these first shocked days, from the viewpoint of a colleague and friend of more than thirty years’ standing.
Angus was a leading talent in the great generation of British illustrators that emerged in the 1950s and ’60s, and who first gained wide attention in the pages of the classic childrens’ educationaI magazines Look and Learn and Finding Out, which launched the careers of many of them. He was an almost exact contemporary of Ron Embleton (1930-88), and a decade older than Richard Hook and Gerry Embleton. These men have been close colleagues and friends over many years, and I am proud to say that they have been my friends too. They have made a central contribution to the long journey that Osprey has taken since those days when the catalogue consisted of a single series, with about 50 titles in the backlist and no certainty of lasting much longer. They were never more important than in the 1970s and ’80s, when most art schools had long given up teaching life-drawing, and the 1950s generation were the only illustrators around with the skills to handle figurative work.
Angus’s talent was innate, but he had to work hard and patiently for many years to learn his craft and build a career. An orphan from the age of 12, he had no chance to attend art school but got a job making the tea and doing any chore that came to hand in an advertising studio. In the 1940s there was no such thing as a guaranteed career path: a craftsman had to learn from experts how to handle pencils and brushes, paints and surfaces, and in the 1950s he began getting regular work as an advertising illustrator. There could have been no better way to increase his versatility, speed and confidence.
After retUrning in 1961 from several years in South Africa - complete with a wife and new son - he began to find expanding opportunities for the sort of work that he had discovered he loved most, mainly in the areas of historical and mythological illustration (though he could, and would, tackle anything). Over the next forty years his reputation grew steadily, from that of an utterly reliable professional to that of a deeply respected ‘tribal elder’ in his craft, whose work was known (and eagerly collected) internationally. A French reviewer called him ‘the magician McBride’: when you study how he handled reflected light, and how he drew the viewer’s eye to precisely where he wanted it, that seems no exaggeration. On hearing of his death a skilled and experienced illustrator who had never met him told me that it was ‘as if a great tree had suddenly fallen’. Angus had not only talent and the rare gift of lasting enthusiasm but the
courage and endurance for a lifetime of application - hard, unremitting graft. Moreover, in a competitive field he was not selfish of his talent or accomplishments, but generous and encouraging to anyone who sought his advice.
It was my good luck to be introduced to Angus by Gerry Embleton in 1975, at the time when, as a relatively new editor, I was anxious to lift the quality of the Men-at-Arms series of books (the work of both the Embleton brothers will be well known to Osprey readers). Angus first wrote and illustrated MAA 57, The Zulu War; he went on to illustrate scores of other titles, of which the last was 436, The Scandinavian Baltic Crusades 1100-1500. That book, and very many others of the ancient and medieval subjects in which Angus delighted, was written and art-researched by Dr David Nicolle - who had got to know Angus’s work through his own father, the illustrator Pat Nicolle, in the days of Finding Out. Angus, in his tUrn, introduced me to Richard Hook: he, and later his
son Adam and daughter Christa, have also made a huge contribution to Osprey’s lists. The point of all this is simply to celebrate enduring friendships born of the mutual respect and liking of a group of talented people, all of whom had the patience to learn how to do honest work the old-fashioned way.
In 1976, in the middle of another fairly grim decade in England, Angus, Pat and their tWo children returned to Cape Town, but he continued to work regularly for old and new clients in Britain and abroad. Occasional visits, in both directions, were a joy; and I will never forget the McBride’s generosity to me in 1982, when I was suffering professional combat-fatigue and badly needed the sunshine and sea air that they made possible.
Conversation with Angus was a mental tonic. It was not only in his day-job that he was knowledgeable and gifted. His mind was wide open, embracing everything from music and the theatre to Egyptology and the occult; he was curious about everything, and had a flair for sharing his enthusiasms. He had an artist’s eye for beauty, both natural and human, and his excitement in it enriched his life and that of those around him.
Finally, the McBrides decided that they could no longer live happily in what has become an unpredictable country. Both their children now live in the British Isles, and just over a year ago they joined their daughter Fiona and her family in the peace of the Eire countryside. They settled happily into the home that was built for them; and there, a few days after his 76th birthday, while taking an afternoon break from the drawing board to enjoy the view and the wildlife in his garden, Angus died of a heart attack, without a moment’s warning.
He was lively, funny, endlessly interested and interesting, and the most marvellous company. You are lucky to meet somebody like Angus even once or twice in a lifetime, and I shall miss him dreadfully.
(c) Martin Windrow
Many moons ago I worked at a graphics bureau in Brum called Scintilla. I was there for just over five years, and for most of that time I had a colleague called Carol Mansley. At the outset she was employed as production manager, but her style was completely dissimilar to her predecessor: Carol’s blended management with a hands-approach.
