Angus McBride

Angus McBride, who has died aged 76, was one of Britain's most respected illustrators of popular historical and military publications, his paintings gracing more than 150 books on subjects as diverse as Roman legionaries, Zulu warriors, Japanese samurai and women's military and civilian roles in the second world war. Every piece was characterised by McBride's trademark attention to detail and his skill at putting a subject in context.

In a typical painting, the figure of King Ashurbanipal, the warrior ruler of the 7th century BC, would be dressed in all his finery in the foreground, protected by his shield bearers - a fine enough image in itself, but McBride would add an army of Assyrian soldiers using a huge siege tower, its wide iron blade ready to prise apart the walls of an enemy stronghold in the background. Not quite finished, McBride adds the fearful faces of archers peering through the battlements of the besieged city and birds wheeling in the skies above.

"Angus was happiest when there was room for an element of creativity," recalls William Shepherd of Osprey, the Oxford-based publisher of military history books. "He could make his subjects look like living people. It was that and the filling in of detail that made his work so exciting."

McBride was born in London of Scottish ancestry. His mother died when he was five and his father seven years later, leaving the orphaned McBride to struggle through an unhappy childhood. His one source of focus was attending the Canterbury Cathedral choir school, where he learned a lifetime appreciation for music and taught himself how to draw.

Determined to make a career of art, he joined an advertising studio where he worked his way up from tea boy to designer, his slow progress interrupted by two years national service in the Royal Fusiliers, mostly spent in Berlin. Returning to austere Britain in 1951, he found there were limited opportunities for advertising work, so he emigrated to Cape Town where he established himself as a commercial artist.

Although he was reasonably successful, by 1961 McBride, by then married with a young son, found South Africa's small publishing industry was unable to provide the work he wanted to do. Returning to London, he found himself a steady market as an illustrator. It was in children's educational magazines that he found his forte. Purnell's Finding Out was launched in 1962 and McBride became a regular contributor, often producing four pages of artwork a week. He also contributed to rival magazine Look and Learn where his subjects ranged from the building of the Great Wall of China to sites of interest along the river Severn.

McBride's work also appeared in various other magazines over the years, including Bible Story, World of Wonder and Military Illustration. In 1975, he became one of the leading artists for Osprey, writing and illustrating The Zulu War (1976) and illustrating a series on the soldiers of Napoleon's armies. He went on to illustrate more than 90 books for the company over the next 30 years, working in a mixture of gouache, watercolour and inks. Some of his finest work was collected in the volume Warriors & Warlords (2002).

His interest in medieval history spilled over into the fantasy market. In the mid-1980s, McBride found regular work with Iron Crown Enterprises, an American company producing role-playing games based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. His illustrations covered the full breadth of Middle-Earth and its inhabitants, many of the best to be found in Angus McBride's Characters of Middle-Earth (1990). One unrealised project was an illustrated edition of Lord of the Rings.

In 1976, unhappy with his dealings with British VAT inspectors, McBride returned to Cape Town, where he worked for local publishers and painted portraits as well as producing book illustrations for publishers in Britain, Europe, the US and Hong Kong. In early 2006, he moved to Ireland where he continued to work until his death.

He is survived by his wife Patricia, children Ian and Fiona, and two grandchildren.

· Angus McBride, artist and illustrator, born May 11 1931; died May 15 2007

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