EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

4 ABOVE: Matania’s last published illustration; King Richard II entertains his child bride Isabella from ‘A Pageant of Kings’, Look and Learn 1963. Many elements of the painting remain unresolved in the artist’s rush to meet his deadline matter was where Look and Learn really shone. As a consequence, Matania’s work was being seen on a weekly basis by a new generation of children. As he provided illustrations which transported his young audience back into the world of classical antiquity, his artwork was as assured as ever, providing readers with the closest thing to a photographer’s eye on events which would otherwise have been consigned to the pages of the dry and dusty textbooks, through which many of them were required to assimilate their history. When Matthews mooted the idea of a new and epic series depicting the history of Britain, as seen through its succession of monarchs, Matania was his logical first choice to bring Alfred Duggan’s stirring text to vivid life. The series entitled ‘A Pageant of Kings’ was a tour-de-force for Matania. Starting with William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings, he set about producing a series of full-colour, full-page illustrations in oils, rather than the pencil and gouache that he normally employed. Week after week the paintings arrived on Matthew’s desk, and week after week the editor, whose pursuit of excellence in all things he turned his hand to was legendary, stared in amazement at the artwork he was receiving, calling in other members of staff to share the moment with him. A cavalcade of seminal moments from British history were played out in Matania’s oils, from the depiction of Richard I leading his men against the armies of Saladin, through the civil wars of King Stephen, to the signing of the Magna Carta. Here was the story of the Island Race as Courtesy of Look and Learn