Raymond Briggs

Author and illustrator Raymond Briggs - creator of the much-loved 1978 children's picture book The Snowman - has died at the age of 88.

"He played practical jokes and enjoyed them being played on him. "He shared his love of nature with Liz on South Downs walks and on family holidays to Scotland and Wales. "He lived a rich and full life, and said he felt lucky to have had both his wife Jean, and his partner of over 40 years Liz in his life.

Television adaptations made the beloved writer's story a fixture of Christmas viewing.

Despite acknowledging the need for a film to be commercially viable, Briggs told the Guardian in 2015 that he hated it at the time and still found it corny. After a child has learned to read fluently, at about eight or nine, then the whole idea of categorising them seems a bit daft.” Briggs turned next to pastels in 1978’s The Snowman, a wordless story about a boy whose snowman comes to life. But this magical story was still grounded in harsh reality; the next morning, the boy wakes to find only the snowman’s hat and scarf listing on a pile of melting snow. The same spirit infused Briggs’s 1977 Fungus the Bogeyman, which imagined Fungus living in dank, smelly tunnels evoked in a palette of mud brown and acid green. “They were so bad that I knew I could do better myself,” he said “so I wrote a story and gave it to an editor hoping he would give me some advice.

An animated version of The Snowman made for Channel 4 in 1982 has become a festive staple and has been shown every Christmas since.

Raymond Briggs brought so much magic and joy to so many. And thank you for the memories.🧡— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) pic.twitter.com/6jgIFlh3OG August 10, 2022 In February 2017, Raymond was honoured with the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award and the trust responded to news of his death by tweeting: “He will live on in his stunning, iconic books.” “He shared his love of nature with Liz on South Downs walks and on family holidays to Scotland and Wales. He also shared his sense of fun and craziness with his family, and with his family of artist friends – at get-togethers, fancy dress parties and summer picnics in the garden. “Drawings from fans – especially children’s drawings – inspired by his books were treasured by Raymond and pinned up on the wall of his studio. “He lived a rich and full life, and said he felt lucky to have had both his wife Jean, and his partner of over 40 years Liz in his life.

He was also behind other children's books such as Father Christmas and Fungus The Bogeyman.

“He shared his love of nature with Liz on South Downs walks and on family holidays to Scotland and Wales. He also shared his sense of fun and craziness with his family, and with his family of artist friends – at get-togethers, fancy dress parties and summer picnics in the garden. For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away. Drawings from fans – especially children’s drawings – inspired by his books were treasured by Raymond and pinned up on the wall of his studio. More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal. For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away. More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.

THE AUTHOR and illustrator of classic children's picture book The Snowman, Raymond Briggs, has di...

"And so in life: Raymond was a generous, unjealous spirit who was a pleasure to work with, as well as to visit in his Sussex cottage and experience his teasing genius in its home. He leaves an extraordinary legacy and a big hole." "He played practical jokes and enjoyed them being played on him.

Author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, best-known for the 1978 children's picture book The Snowman, has died aged 88.

Raymond Briggs, who created the original picture book that became beloved Academy Award-nominated short The Snowman, has died aged 88.

“He shared his love of nature with [late partner] Liz on South Downs walks and on family holidays to Scotland and Wales,” it added. He was best known for 1978’s The Snowman, a beautiful picture book that told the story of a boy who builds a snowman who comes to life at the stroke of midnight. “He also shared his sense of fun and craziness with his family, and with his family of artist friends — at get-togethers, fancy dress parties and summer picnics in the garden.”

The children's author used comic-strip-like panels to explore the joys and struggles of workaday British life. With irreverent wit, he also interrogated ...

In “Father Christmas,” the only person the title character interacts with is a milkman. He did not like to leave England and lived in a slightly eccentric house in East Sussex, where he collected jigsaw puzzles of the Queen Mother. The living room ceiling was papered with maps. After his wife’s death, he spent four decades in a relationship with Liz Benjamin, who died of Parkinson’s disease in 2015. Growing up in a house without many books, he gravitated instead to the storytelling found in newspaper cartoons. During World War II, he was briefly sent to live with his aunts in the countryside. Mr. Briggs admired the Northern Renaissance’s emphasis on daily life — his studio wall included “Children’s Games,” by the Flemish master Bruegel — but he was not interested in painting with oil. His complaint “I hate winter!” was delivered on the toilet. In “The Snowman” — which, unlike Mr. Briggs’s other books, has no words — rounded frames house the emotional arc of a boy’s winter adventure. A film adaptation of “The Snowman,” which was released in 1982 and features the haunting song “Walking in the Air” in its symphonic score, was nominated for the Academy Award for best animated short film. “I don’t think about what children want,” Mr. Briggs told the BBC in 2017. Mr. Briggs often depicted domesticity and the routines of the working class. “When the Wind Blows” (1982), an argument for nuclear disarmament, shows a retired English couple blithely following the government’s precautions before they are killed in a Soviet attack.

His family said in a statement through his publisher Penguin Random House that Briggs died on Tuesday morning. Share this article.

Raymond Briggs brought so much magic and joy to so many. And thank you for the memories.🧡pic.twitter.com/6jgIFlh3OG He played practical jokes and enjoyed them being played on him. In February 2017, Briggs was honoured with the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award and the trust responded to news of his death by tweeting: “He will live on in his stunning, iconic books.” “He also shared his sense of fun and craziness with his family, and with his family of artist friends – at get-togethers, fancy dress parties and summer picnics in the garden. “Drawings from fans – especially children’s drawings – inspired by his books were treasured by Raymond and pinned up on the wall of his studio.

Author-illustrator known for The Snowman and Father Christmas whose books often explored the quiet heroism of ordinary lives.

Although he bemoaned his tutors’ failure to recognise a “natural illustrator”, the formal training that he received imbued in Briggs a strong sense of structure and of the importance of good draughtsmanship. Ethel, a young parlour maid in a Belgravia house, had been innocently shaking out her duster from an upper window as Ernest passed by on his bicycle and confidently returned what he took to be a friendly wave. Other books were translated for stage and radio, with Briggs taking a keen interest in the overall production. Briggs can be found standing ahead of Father Christmas in the queue for a shave at the campsite, along with the illustrator John Vernon Lord (sporting his initials on his wash bag). The author’s VW Camper van would make regular appearances too. In 1982 he told the Times: “When I did [When the Wind Blows] I was not remotely a CND supporter. But perhaps the most powerful motivation was a hatred of injustice by authority toward the powerless and naively respectful common man. At Hamish Hamilton the newly arrived editor Julia MacRae (later to set up her own imprint) played a major role in developing the artist’s career. Though he was best known for his hugely popular books Father Christmas (1973) and The Snowman (1978), his output also explored themes such as war, politics and the environment through a deeply human, very British lens that often settled on the quiet heroism of ordinary lives. As various narrative texts came his way, he realised that not all of them were of the highest quality, and took to writing himself. As with all Briggs’s subsequent titles, the book is full of autobiographical elements and references. A major breakthrough had already come in 1966, with The Mother Goose Treasury, for which he received his first Kate Greenaway medal. He started out in 1957 by hawking his portfolio around as a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, London, picking up freelance illustration work from newspapers, magazines and design studios.

The beloved writer and illustrator of the Snowman and Father Christmas has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute.

He had a drive to tell stories that allowed the reader to inhabit the real world more profoundly and reflectively than merely living in it allowed. People tend to forget that The Snowman was a wordless book, and that’s because the story that the images convey is so vivid. During our conversation he admitted he didn’t know how dry batteries worked, and told me about the trouble he had with the lack of electrical sockets in his studio. And I think for a lot of people, that book was one of Raymond Briggs’s. I was four years old when my family first moved from Hong Kong to Britain in the 90s. I had studiously traced a spread from Briggs’s Fungus the Bogeyman and was trying to insert my own words to accompany his brilliant illustrations. We never forget the first book we read that really grabs us, and we never forget the way that it made us feel. I feel so lucky to have found that dog-eared copy of The Snowman in the doctor’s waiting room. I pored over the illustrations of The Snowman while waiting in a doctor’s surgery and announced at the end: “Well, that’s life isn’t it!” Inside though, I was both bereft and curious. I can’t vouch for his pyjamas but there’s a good chunk of him in the character of his Father Christmas. We should remember that there was – and still is – a pretence in some quarters that nuclear wars are winnable and that we can “protect and survive”. Raymond’s stolid, blitz-hardened couple reveal the terrible impossibility of this view – but not through protesting about it. His Father Christmas turned an icon into a human being: a grumpy, hard-working man of simple but necessary pleasures including one of the first sitting-on-a-loo pictures in a children’s book.

Raymond Briggs, who has died aged 88, was famous as the author of illustrated Christmas stories for children – with a difference.

Briggs’s family said: “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. “He lived a rich and full life. His chosen medium was the strip cartoon – or, more accurately, strip illustration. In fact, Briggs envisaged him as a workman. And Fungus the Bogeyman is a repulsive monster hero who revels in slime, rot and bodily fluids. His own views on the traditional jollifications were positively Scrooge-like.

A blood cancer charity has hailed the late Raymond Briggs a “quietly generous man” who supported them for years in memory of his wife.

Sending condolences to the friends and family of Raymond Briggs. Every year Raymond made a donation to our research after his wife Jean died from leukaemia in 1973. In a tribute shared to Twitter, they added: “Thank you Raymond for your years of support, and for the joy your stories brought to so many.” Thank you Raymond for your years of support, and for the joy your stories brought to so many ⛄️#RIPRaymondBriggs pic.twitter.com/S4E3kjK9BA