Victor Ambrus

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Recreating the Past (2001) by Victor Ambrus and Mick Aston

Victor Ambrus (born László Győző Ambrus, August 19, 1935, in Budapest, Hungary), is an illustrator best known for his regular appearances on the Channel 4 archaeology television series Time Team, where he visualises how the sites being excavated may have once looked. He is an Associate of the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers. He is also patron of the Association of Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors.

Ambrus studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts for three years, but fled Hungary to England in 1956 following the failure of the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet-backed government. He resumed his education at the Royal College of Art in London. After graduating in 1960 he became a freelance illustrator, and has contributed to almost 300 books.

Ambrus has twice won the Kate Greenaway Medal, once in 1965 for The Three Poor Tailors, and again in 1975 for Mishka and Horses in Battle. He has also won the World Wildlife Award.

Among his credits are illustrating several fairy tale compilations by Ruth Manning-Sanders, including The Glass Man and the Golden Bird: Hungarian Folk and Fairy Tales and Jonnikin and the Flying Basket: French Folk and Fairy Tales.