EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 4 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

76 L. Ashwell Wood Jeremy Briggs and Peter Richardson take a nostalgic look at the cutaway world of one of illustration’s more unusual exponents. The work of Leslie Ashwell Wood is immediately familiar to anyone old enough to have grown up in post war Britain, and to have been one of the many millions of readers of the Eagle ; the comic that embodied the spirit of optimism necessary to rise above the privations of austerity which still clung to the very fabric of 1950s Britain. Ashwell Wood’s distinctive contribution was not however comics related, but it was every bit as compelling as ‘Dan Dare’ or ‘Riders of the Range’. It was about as niche market as an illustrator’s work can be, but was so universally compelling that he was guaranteed an audience for as long as he produced his own particular brand of illustration. © Colin Frewin and Associates