Antony Maitland, who has died of cancer aged 90, was best known for his black-and-white line illustrations that played a central role in shaping the look of children’s novels of the 1960s and 70s.
His work was particularly associated with Leon Garfield’s historical novels, starting with Jack Holborn (1964) and including many of Garfield’s 12-volume series The Apprentices (1976-78). The atmospheric and detailed crosshatched line drawings created a vivid 18th-century England, lifted by touches of wit that perfectly matched Garfield’s elegant stories. But there was much other work, and Maitland did not wish to be pigeonholed as just Garfield’s illustrator, or confined to historical fiction.
