Raymond Redvers Briggs (18 January 1934 – 9 August 2022) was an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author. Achieving critical and popular success among adults and children, he is best known in Britain for his 1978 story The Snowman, a book without words whose cartoon adaptation is televised and whose musical adaptation is staged every Christmas.

Briggs won the 1966 and 1973 Kate Greenaway Medals from the British Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject.

Early life

Raymond Redvers Briggs was born on 18 January 1934 in Wimbledon, Surrey (now London), to Ernest Redvers Briggs (1900–1971), a milkman, and Ethel Bowyer (1895–1971), a former lady's maid-turned-housewife, who married in 1930.

Briggs attended Rutlish School, at that time a grammar school, pursued cartooning from an early age and, despite his father's attempts to discourage him from this unprofitable pursuit, attended the Wimbledon School of Art from 1949 to 1953 to study painting, and Central School of Art to study typography.

From 1953 to 1955, he was a National Service conscript in the Royal Corps of Signals at Catterick, where he was made a draughtsman.

Career

After briefly pursuing painting, he became a professional illustrator, one of his students was Chris Riddell, who went on to win three Greenaway Medals. Briggs was a commended runner-up for the 1964 Kate Greenaway Medal (Fee Fi Fo Fum, a collection of nursery rhymes)

The Snowman (Hamilton, 1978) was entirely wordless, It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1982, and has since been shown every year on British television (except 1984). On Christmas Eve 2012 the 30th anniversary of the original was marked by the airing of the sequel The Snowman and the Snowdog.

Briggs continued to work in a similar format, but with more adult content, in Gentleman Jim (1980), a sombre look at the daily trials of elderly working class couple Jim and Hilda Bloggs. Briggs said that while the couple was based on his own parents "I like to think my parents weren't quite as dim as they are". When the Wind Blows (1982) confronted the trusting, optimistic Bloggs couple with the horror of nuclear war, and was praised in the House of Commons for its timeliness and originality. It was inspired by Briggs' own outrage at the controversial Protect and Survive pamphlet published by the British government in 1980; the Bloggs couple spend their last days trying to follow its advice. and subsequently an animated film, featuring John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft. The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (1984) was a denunciation of the Falklands War.

Personal life and death

Briggs's wife Jean Taprell Clarke, who had schizophrenia, died from leukaemia in 1973, two years after his parents' death. They had no children.

At the end of his life, Briggs lived in a small house in Westmeston, Sussex. His long-term partner, Liz Benjamin, died in October 2015 having had Parkinson's disease. Briggs continued to work on writing and illustrating books.

In 2014, Briggs received the Phoenix Picture Book Award from the Children's Literature Association for The Bear (1994). The award committee stated:

<blockquote>With surprising page-turns, felicitous pauses, and pitch-perfect dialogue, Briggs renders the drama and humour of child–adult and child–bear relations, while questioning the nature of imagination and reality. As a picture book presented in graphic novel format, Briggs's work was ground-breaking when first published and remains cutting edge twenty years later in its creative unity of text and picture.</blockquote>

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. Briggs was one of two runners-up for the illustration award in 1984.

  • 1979 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award (US), for The Snowman
  • 1979 Silver Pen Award (Netherlands)
  • 1982 Children's Rights Workshop Other Award
  • 1982 Francis Williams Award for Illustration, for The Snowman
  • 2014 Phoenix Picture Book Award for The Bear

The National Portrait Gallery, London, holds several photographic portraits of Briggs in its permanent collection.

Briggs was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to literature. A book about his life's work entitled Raymond Briggs: The Illustrators was written by Nicolette Jones and published in 2020.

Selected works

  • Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales (1958), retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders and illustrated by Briggs
  • The Fair to Middling (1959), by Arthur Calder-Marshall. Rupert Hart-Davis, London
  • The Strange House (1961), by Briggs
  • Midnight Adventure (1961), by Briggs
  • Ring-a-ring o' Roses (1962), a collection of nursery rhymes
  • Sledges to the Rescue (1963), by Briggs
  • Fee Fi Fo Fum (1964) – a picture book of nursery rhymes
  • The Mother Goose Treasury (Hamilton, 1966), from Mother Goose – winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal
  • Shackleton's Epic Voyage (1969), by Michael Brown
  • Jim and the Beanstalk (1971), by Briggs
  • Father Christmas (1973), by Briggs – winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal
  • Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), by Briggs
  • The Snowman (1978)
  • Gentleman Jim (1980), by Briggs
  • When the Wind Blows (1982), by Briggs
  • The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (1984), by Briggs
  • All in a Day (1986), written by Mitsumasa Anno, illustrated by Anno and others
  • Unlucky Wally (1987)
  • Unlucky Wally 20 Years On (1989)
  • The Man (1992), by Briggs
  • The Bear (1994), by Briggs
  • Ethel & Ernest: A True Story (1998)
  • Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age (2001), by Briggs
  • The Adventures of Bert, by Allan Ahlberg (2001)
  • A Bit More Bert, by Allan Ahlberg (2002)
  • The Puddleman (2004)
  • Notes from the Sofa (2014)
  • Time for lights out (2019)

Adaptations

  • The Snowman (1982)
  • When the Wind Blows (1983) BBC radio adaptation with Peter Sallis and Brenda Bruce
  • When the Wind Blows (1983) Little Theatre, Bristol and Whitehall Theatre, London.
  • When the Wind Blows (1986) film adaptation with Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills
  • Father Christmas (1991)
  • Father Christmas Stage adaptation by Pins and Needles Productions at the Lyric Hammersmith, 2012
  • Fungus the Bogeyman (2015) A 3-part television adaptation, featuring Timothy Spall and Victoria Wood shown on Sky1 in December 2015.
  • Ethel & Ernest (2016)

See also

Explanatory notes

References

Further reading

  • Barbara Baker, The Way We Write, (London: Continuum, 2006)
  • Nicolette Jones, Raymond Briggs: Blooming Books (Jonathan Cape, 2003). Extracts from the published works of Briggs with text commentary by Jones.
  • Richard Kilborn, The Multi-Media Melting Pot: Marketing "When the Wind Blows" (Comedia, 1986)
  • D. Martin, "Raymond Briggs", in Douglas Martin, The Telling Line: Essays on Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (Julia MacRae Books, 1989), pp.&nbsp;227–42
  • Elaine Moss, "Raymond Briggs: On British attitudes to the strip cartoon and children's book illustration", Signal (1979 January)
  • Anita Silvey (editor), The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators (Mariner Books, 2002)
  • "Panel Borders: The Work of Raymond Briggs" radio interview broadcast 8 January 2009 (audio)
  • Search Raymond Briggs at Kirkus Reviews
  • Articles on Raymond Briggs at Comics Bulletin