My mother, Margaret Jones, who has died aged 105, was an illustrator of books that retold the myths and legends of Wales, though also of other cultures.
After a late start to her career – at the age of 60 – she illustrated more than 20 books, including, most notably, a new version of The Mabinogion (1988), a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories featuring a hand-drawn map of Wales that has become a favourite in schoolrooms and homes.
Mainly using watercolour, her illustrations also adorned a 1988 adaptation by Gwyn Thomas of the Welsh folk tale Culhwch ac Olwen, as well as a collection of European stories by Wolfgang Greller, From the Four Corners of Europe (2000), and The Elephant-headed God and Other Hindu Tales (1989) by Debjani Chatterjee.
In 2000 she illustrated Owain Glyndŵr: Prince of Wales, a book commissioned by the National Library of Wales to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the beginning of the Welsh leader’s reign.
Margaret, who was mostly known as Peggy, lived most of her life in Wales but was born in Bromley in Kent as the second child of a Methodist minister, Christopher North, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Atkinson).
Her mother died when she was eight, after which she was sent to Trinity Hall boarding school in Southport, Lancashire. She then took a degree in classical studies at the University of Birmingham before going on to train to become a missionary at Kingsmead College in Selly Oak, and it was there, in 1941, that she met Basil Jones. They married the same year.
The pair became missionaries in Mizoram, India, until 1953, when they returned to live for the rest of their lives in Aberystwyth, where Basil became a lecturer in education at Aberystwyth University and a peripatetic minister in mid-Wales. They had six children, and it was because of Peggy’s duties as a mother and housewife that her career as an illustrator did not begin earlier.
Peggy had never received any formal training as an artist, but in 1979 she asked the Aberystwyth Arts Centre if they would let her mount a personal exhibition at their gallery on Penglais Hill. They agreed, and as a result she received an approach from the Arts Council of Wales to send them samples of her work with a view to illustrating a new version of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi.
In the following 25 years Peggy made up for lost time, illustrating not just books but posters and calendars, as well as two myth-related maps of Wales.
She also wrote two books for children, Nat (2004) and Nat and the Box of Gifts (2006), which she illustrated. In addition, for her own pleasure, she self-published a sumptuous, illustrated version of The Revelation of John in 2008.
Basil died in 2002. Peggy is survived by five of their children, Elaine, Malcolm, Christopher, Mark and me, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her son Peter died in 2022.
