Charles Keeping I

 I was very lucky and bought an immaculate copy of 'Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary', written and illustrated by Charles Keeping, published in 1967, for which he was awarded his first Kate Greenaway Medal. This book is sublimely illustrated with incredible colour and line work.  Charles left school at 14 and then worked at a printers, whilst doing a correspondence art class funded by his aunts, before war claimed him for munitions and then the navy. He was initially turned down for college and worked as a gas man taking art classes in the evening. He finally got his grant and studied full-time from 1949 aged 24, specialising in illustration and lithography. 

Charles Keeping sought in his stories and illustrations to recreate the vanished world of his childhood, which he spent in south London, in Lambeth, a hub of markets and docks.