Photo by Christopher Pledger
Per The Guardian, beloved British author and cartoonist Raymond Briggs passed away yesterday morning, August 9, aged 88. Briggs was best known for creating “The Snowman,” the wordless 1978 children’s book about a boy whose snowman comes to life, that became an Academy Award-nominated short film in 1982, which in turn spawned the classic Christmas song “Walking in the Air.” His other graphic novels and picture books included “When the Wind Blows,” “Father Christmas,” “Fungus the Bogeyman,” and The Bear, which have all been adapted to film, TV, and for the stage.
Raymond Redvers Briggs was born in Wimbledon, London, to Ethel and Ernest Briggs on January 18, 1934. Their lives, and much of his upbringing, was chronicled in the 1998 graphic novel “Ethel & Ernest,” which was adapted into an animated film of the same name in 2016. As a child, Briggs was evacuated to the countryside during the Second World War. After the war, he attended Wimbledon School of Art, Central School of Art, and Slade School of Fine Art, graduating by 1957. He also undertook national service, working as a draughtsman for the Royal Corps of Signals.
Briggs began illustrating children’s books with Ruth Manning-Sanders’s Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales, a fairy tale anthology published by Oxford University Press in 1958. He also began teaching at Brighton School of Art in 1961, a role he continued in until 1986. In 1966, he won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustrating the nursery rhyme collection The Mother Goose Treasury, and won again for “Father Christmas” in 1973. The latter, which Briggs wrote and drew, notably depicted the legendary giver of gifts as a cantankerous working class man, continuously complaining while carrying out his annual duties. It was the only graphic novel to win the prize until “Long Way Down” in 2022.
Briggs created a sequel, “Father Christmas Goes on Holiday,” in 1975, and then “Fungus the Bogeyman,” a similar working class spin on an archetypal figure, in 1977. “The Snowman” followed, as did the film, which Briggs provided an introduction to, until he was replaced by David Bowie to sell the project in the States. Although the film became a perennial Christmas favorite, Briggs opined it was “corny,” criticizing producer John Coates’s decision to add Father Christmas to the story. Regardless, the film ends the same way as the book, with the protagonist discovering the snowman has melted away, something Briggs did to convey death as a fact of life to his young readers.
In 1982, Briggs created his first adult graphic novel, “When the Wind Blows,” the devastating story of an elderly couple who prepare, and then “survive” a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The book, and its 1986 film version, was a formative experience for many readers: in an essay, Kieron Gillen described it as “provid[ing] my childish mind with its first real images of Armageddon,” while Rob Williams stated it “had a huge impact on a generation of kids in the 80s just as much as the like of Threads. A comic to break your heart.”
He followed up in 1984 with the satirical picture book The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman, a denunciation of the Falklands War depicting Margaret Thatcher and Leopoldo Galtieri as giant metal monsters. Briggs continued to create until his final years: his last book proved to be 2019’s Time for Lights Out, an autobiographical collection of drawings and reflections, where he also ponders how he’ll remembered after his passing. During his life, Briggs was also recognized with a knighthood from the Queen, two British Book Awards, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and the Phoenix Picture Book Award.
Briggs was married to Jean Briggs from 1963, until her death from leukaemia in 1973. Jean struggled with schizophrenia, and the two did not have any children. He had a long-term partner named Liz, who passed away in 2015. He is survived by her children and grandchildren, who said in a statement he was “was much loved and will be deeply missed. We know that Raymond’s books were loved by and touched millions of people around the world, who will be sad to hear this news. Drawings from fans — especially children’s drawings — inspired by his books were treasured by Raymond, and pinned up on the wall of his studio.” They went on thank staff at Royal Sussex County Hospital “for their kind and thoughtful care of Raymond in his final weeks.”
