Keeping on lllustrating

'Children's books? Well, I've dropped out of the scene a bit.'

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Strange words from the illustrator of The Highwayman, this year's Kate Greenaway Medal winner, who has a new book (Beowulf) published next month? Well perhaps not, because in a sense these books are a kind of come-back or at least a change of direction. When Charles Keeping first won the Greenaway award it was in 1968 for Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary, almost the first of a dazzling sequence of full colour books. But in many ways he has been ahead of his time. Teachers, and librarians, have found him `difficult', `dark', `depressing'; hard to `place' and problematic. In the early 1970's he was much in need of an Elaine Moss to point out that picture books are not necessarily all `for the infants'.

He got into children's books almost by accident (his first commission was for Rosemary Sutcliff's The Silver Branch) and alongside a stream of picture books has continued to illustrate novels for children and adults. The Highwayman and Beowulf, drawn in black with pen. pencil and soft chalk and printed in two colours (black and sepia) are new departures. The audience they find should take a look back at titles like Inter­City, River, Railway Passage and Wasteground Circus which mercifully are still in print.

To mark the publication of Beowulf Charles Keeping talked to us about his work.

`The general feeling now is that my ideas don't sell that well. I didn't stop doing full colour books from choice - but you don't get asked to do them if they can't sell them. Nowadays you've got to have a popular storyline, an idea that's a possibility for co-editions. You've got to please the Americans, the French, the Germans, the Japanese. Before they can ever begin thinking about taking on a full colour book publishers have got to think, "Will we get our money back?" I've never been that popular. Ten years ago editors took more risks. To produce something that's successful every time you've got to play a little safe. I don't feel that's what it's about. I'm not illustrating books like you would make sausages or something. It's not what to me books are about.'

Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary (1967)

`I didn't set out to do a book about high rise flats. I wanted to do a book about a man who painted birds (literally). But Mabel George (my editor at OUP) wouldn't have it. She said it was wicked and anyway it couldn't happen. I said it did because my uncle used to do it. But she wouldn't change her mind. I was upset and I walked down through the Elephant and Castle where they had just put up all those high rise estates with all these kids in them. I looked up and I thought the kids were like birds in cages. The sparrows in the street had a better life 'though they took a chance on being squashed by the traffic. So I did the book. It wasn't a moral judgement, just a statement of what I saw. I like to let everyone make their own judgements.'

Joseph's Yard (1969) Through the Window (1970) Spider's Web (1972)

`I did these for a BBC TV programme called Storyline. I painted on layers of plastic because I wanted the colours to be very rich. It worked on film - the camera panned into the pictures. But when they were photographed to make printing plates for the book the camera went through the plastic as though it wasn't there. You couldn't distinguish the range of colour tones. I think it was because they were photographing through the plastic rather than down on it; but I couldn't prove it because they were being printed in Austria. Anyway I gave it up after three books.

I think Joseph's Yard was the truest one. But I particularly liked Spider's Web although it never sold. Everyone said "What a revolting little boy, and he hides behind a girl when he's afraid." Well I used to hide behind my sister. I thought I was presenting teachers with opportunities. I thought they could say, Do you think he was frightened of the spider? Do you think he was a coward? But they didn't like it. I suppose people just like something to amuse them. My publishers said could I try to do something a bit more popular. So I did Richard - the Police horse!

Railway Passage (1974)

`I met this bloke who likes to mend cars. His job is gritting roads - or waiting around to grit roads - but he likes to mend cars. So he came to mend mine. All day he was at it and he was happy. At the end he came out dripping with grease. The car started - perfect! I said, "How much do I owe you?" He said, "Don't insult me, Charlie, don't insult me." I thought of what makes us happy and what we do for money. I thought of all the dreams and desires we have and what greed does to us. And I invented the man who mends bikes for nothing and the old girl with her fish, Sam. She came out of watching our kids with their guinea pigs. When they had one they loved it, they called it a name. In the end they had so many it all went up the spout. When she gets her share of the pools win the old lady gets lots of fish. So many she can't see Sam - she's lost him for ever.

All these things: they can be funny, they can be serious. When you see them you can make a picture book. But people don’t seem to want them any more.’

The God Beneath The Sea (1970) The Golden Shadow (1973) The Highwayman (1981)

`I like to approach illustrating with whatever I feel about that story. If you present me with a violent story it's pretty obvious the drawing is going to be fairly violent. You can't do the Greek Myths without a certain amount of violence. Without a certain amount of sensuality too, that's what they are all about. With The Highwayman, let's be honest, these guys came and they probably raped the girl too. When I read something I get feelings about it - I can't keep that out of my work. It's impossible. I may not draw a rape, but that's in my mind.'

Dickens

(Charles Keeping is currently illustrating all of Dickens for the Folio Society).

`Dickens is an incident writer. He's a very descriptive writer. You can't illustrate Dickens in the abstract. Whatever you do - film, musical, book - it has to be visual. He describes it all - the illustrator has got very little to do. You can't make up, or add anything or invent anything - it's all there. As an illustrator you have to draw within the limitations of the job.'

Beowulf (1982)

`I don't take quite so heroic a view of Beowulf as Kevin Crossley­Holland does. First of all Grendel seems to me a bit of a poor sod. To be as disliked as he is is a bit sad. I saw him more as a cripple, deformed. He's not a great big tough guy. He looks sad, he looks frightened all the time. He has every right to be frightened because Beowulf s going to kill him and that's what it's all about and he knows that.

I've made Grendel's mother more ferocious, but not ferocious in that she's horrific, but ferocious because Beowulf's killed her son. She loves her son, so she must be capable of love. I can't see them as totally evil. When they are both dead I brought both their heads together so that they are slightly touching one another in death.

I've used a sort of symbolism too. All the heads of the Saxons in their helmets have got the rather repetitive look you get when people wear uniform and lose their personality. I used Saxon helmets, as helmets of roughly that time - you've got to; but I don't think that matters. A helmet then is the same as a helmet now; once you get everyone with helmets on it doesn't matter whether they are Saxons or police or yobs on the beach at Margate: they are just helmeted people.

The night before Grendel comes I've drawn them all drunk. A whole row of drunken heads, a load of untidy slobs all rollicking about and singing. And then suddenly bang, bang, bang, they are all back in helmets again. So you get a humanising of them and suddenly they are robots again.

Kevin and I did the book without contact between us. I took him my dummy strip so he could see the whole flow and pattern of the idea - how much space there was for me, how much for him. But he didn't see my drawings. I finished before he did. I worked like that with Leon Garfield on God Beneath the Sea. Those pictures fit and yet really they shouldn't.

I've felt for a long while the writer in this type of book has been too dominant. In a book like Beowulf it can't possibly be so. If half the book is going to be drawings the bloke doing the drawings has to have as much say as the writer. I don't see why words and pictures in a book like this necessarily have to come together, be the same. The drawings can show a sympathy which the writer may not. In a way you get two stories. It's fun doing something like that.

I think Beowulf is going to be a better book than Highwayman. It's got a nice complete look about it. It was a nice story to do. You could do it again and again and again. That's the damned trouble with these things. You do one and as soon as you've finished it you think - I could have done that so much better; why didn't I do it better than that?'

Some of Charles Keeping's books available from Oxford University Press

The Highwayman

0 19 279748 4, £4.50

Inter-City

0 19 279716 6, £3.95

Joseph's Yard

0 19 279651 8, £3.75

Railway Passage

0 19 279700 X, £3.95

River

0 19 279723 9, £3.95

Shaun and the Cart-Horse

0 19 279624 0, £3.95 and

0 19 272110 0, £1.25 (pb)

Through the Window

0 19 279655 0, £3.95

Wasteground Circus

0 19 279708 5, £3.95

For Kestrel, he illustrated

The God Beneath the Sea

(0 7226 5093 0, £5.50) and

The Golden Shadow

(0 7226 5162 7, £4.50) by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen.

Charles Keeping has also illustrated The Beginning of the Armadilloes, one of four Just So Stories coming from Macmillan in October (0 333 34138 4, £2.95).