Ronald William "Josh" Kirby (November 27 1928 - October 23 2001), was a British commercial artist born in Waterloo Lancashire and educated at the Liverpool City School of Art, where he acquired the nickname Josh.

Kirby painted film-posters, magazine and (especially) book covers. Creating a total of over 400 cover paintings, his personal preference was for science fiction jackets (for example see Robert Silverberg's Majipoor novels and Kirby's own Voyage of the Ayeguy) and his work on the covers of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels is well known. He worked almost exclusively in oils.

Josh Kirby's death, in his sleep at age 72, in Shelfanger near Diss in Norfolk, was unexpected but of natural causes.

External links

• Terry Pratchett informs alt.fan.pratchett of Josh's death http://groups.google.com/groups?safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_umsgid=otTTZXAw
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