his most personal work, Cockney Ding Dong, a lavish 190-page volume collecting and illustrating the traditional songs of the family singalongs of his childhood. A record of some the songs was also released, featuring the voices of members of Keeping's family. Charles himself sings "They're Moving Father's Grave to Build a Sewer!" Teaching At the invitation of Henry Trivick, Keeping continued to use the printing presses at Regent Street Polytechnic after his graduation, and from 1956 to 1963 he lectured there one day a week. From 1963 he was a visiting lecturer at Croydon College of Art, initially in illustration, and after 1979 in lithography. His students included Fiona French. Personal life Charles Keeping died of a brain tumour on 16 May 1988. His widow, Renate, ran the Keeping Gallery, displaying his and her own work for many years. She died in 2014. Reception Keeping's work was controversial in some quarters. Some felt his work too flashy, and illustrator Edward Ardizzone is said to have referred to him as "that vulgar artist". Others felt that the frankness and violence of his work, and his taste for the morbid and macabre, were unsuitable for children. His biographer has commented, Keeping's former editor Mabel George said of him, "I have always had a strong feeling that Charles was a true genius... it is my belief that he came to maturity very slowly (not in terms of technique, at which he was a master from his earliest days) but from the point of view of his self-confidence as an artist. ... he was all the time growing and developing as a man whose whole life, heart and mind, was dedicated to exploring the human situation in a universe that he found both beautiful and terrifying." His former teacher and fellow illustrator Nigel Lambourne has described him as "one of the few great illustrators we've got. A superb draughtsman, and he had – for all his marvellously brash, outgoing manner – an ability to tear up purposively anything that didn't work." Awards The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Keeping was one of three runners-up for the illustration award in 1974 and was the British nominee again in 1978. He won a Golden Apple award at the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava in