Keeping Pulls No Punches

On a cold and drizzly day we did not mind having to stay in for Ronan of Tom Sutton Heating who came to service our boiler.

I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2022/01/06/a-knights-tale-89-sams-first-cut/

This afternoon I scanned the next four of Charles Keeping’s powerful illustrations to “A Tale of Two Cities” in which he pulls no punches.

‘Such awful workers and such awful work’

‘The executioner showed the people the head of the king’

‘ ‘Take off his head!’ cried the audience’

‘No sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream’

This evening we dined on succulent roast pork with crunchy crackling; apple sauce; crisp Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes; leaks, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower. carrots, and green beans. Jackie drank Diet Coke and I drank Chevalier Se Fauvert Comté Tolosan Rouge 2019.

53 comments

      1. We are stay in also. It was right around 0 Fahrenheit last night when we got home right after sunset. Just the electronics were pulled from the truck and we called it quits. Todays high is barely above freezing but a lot more tolerable to unload the truck in.

      1. Phew! Here’s a grisly, disgusting correlation. During the 1920s and 1930s in the American South, when Blacks were lynched, there were often big gatherings and picnics to go with it. Pictures were taken of the lynched body, and those picture were made into postcards. Not so long ago, Derrick, was it? What an extreme species we are! Capable of great brutality and cruelty and great empathy and generosity.

  1. Mr. Keeping’s faces are always fabulous! Those expressions! Those details! Down to the Executioner’s hairy arm! HA! 😀
    Stay safe! Stay warm! Keep on Keeping on! HA! 😀 Get it?!
    (((HUGS))) 🙂

  2. I read so many of Dickens more popular novels in late primary school that I soooo need to revisit them. A Tale of Two Cities was one. Pretty gruesome reading for an eleven year old when you think about it, but mercifully mine was not illustrated, even though Keeping’s are worthy of the task.

  3. Keeping’s illustrations convey the kind of mass hysteria that crowds can fall prey to … we have many modern examples of that kind of unthinking, unruly behaviour to turn to. I love to get stuck into reading on a dull and chilly day.

  4. Keeping does manage to elevate the imagination of the simplest of the readers even if he has to be cruel in his depictions. I see no reason why he should have hesitated when the master storyteller himself was proceeding forth full steam.

  5. Hi Derrick! Bob & I have been down and out = sequestered and feeling rotten, since January 1st. We are ready to feel better and get out of this warm, comfy house!! I’m sorry you were having problems with your heating system on a cold, drizzly day. Glad Tom was able to fix it for you. Stay warm…. stay cozy… hugs Jackie for me … and stay well!! We send New Years greeting to you for a healthy, happy 2022. We’re getting there… slowly…

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