Margery Gill

Born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, on 5 April 1925, she was brought up in Hatch End, London[1] after her father Oscar moved there to take a job at the Post Office Research Station developing the speaking clock.

In 1946 she began studying etching and engraving at the Royal College of Art, married actor Patrick Jordan, and illustrated her first book, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, for the Oxford University Press.

[1] John Ryder, the publisher's design and art director, said her early work was "interfered with, rather than aided" by her background in etching and engraving, but as her drawings became bolder her work became more in demand, her serious, unsentimental view of childhood suiting the kitchen sink realism prevalent in children's books at the time.

"[2] She combined freelance work as an illustrator with motherhood - she had two daughters - and a teaching job at Maidstone College of Art.

[4] As the 1970s went on her work fell out of fashion as publishers preferred cartoonier illustrations for children's books, and her output was slowed by arthritis in her hands,[2] and in her later years, cataracts.