Cheeky children’s writer Raymond Briggs The dignified British everyday life and the breadth of bold emotions were most prominent in The Snowman’s silent adventures. he was 88 years old.
he died wednesday his British publisherPenguin Random House.
By stacking squares and rectangles like toy blocks, Briggs brings the visual language of cartoons to fairy tales. This technique allowed him to cram the action into the pages before pleasing or shocking his readers with a large canvas: two new friends soaring over an English palace and five planes flying. A fighter is ominously approaching.
Despite dealing primarily with works for children, some of his most successful books are meditations on death. Adapted into one of Britain’s most popular Christmas films, ‘The Snowman’ (1978) focuses on the fleeting friendship between a boy and a snowman. When the Wind Blows (1982), an advocate for nuclear disarmament, depicts a retired British couple willing to comply with government precautions before a Soviet attack kills them.
“I don’t think about what my kids want,” Briggs said. told the BBC 2017.
Those outlandish ideas included “Fungus the Bogeyman” (1977). This is a shy green creature whose long umbilical cord has been censored by the publisher. “The Man” (1992), a rude homunculus that haunts a boy. and “Jim and the Beanstalk” (1997) is about the transformation of a bald, visionary giant.
Mr. Briggs often portrayed domestic life and working-class everyday life. “Gentleman’s Gym” (1980) imagines what it would be like if a toilet cleaner could pursue a more fashionable career. “Ug: Stone Age Boy Genius” (2001) follows a young caveman whose parents think he should be content with the toil instead of pursuing his ideas about fire and wheels. I’m here.
the artist admired the Northern Renaissance, which emphasized everyday life — The walls of his studio were adorned with ‘Children’s Plays’ by the Flemish master Brueghel the Elder — but he had no interest in oil painting. After using the grotesque gooey gouache of “Fungus,” he turned to colored pencils to enhance the light in “Snowman.”
He was meticulous about his upbringing and painted hundreds of bricks for the façade. His squat, rounded human often wondered if there was more to his life than toil. His friendly non-humans — giants were an early specialty — suggested they probably existed.
Yet failed wishes and loss were consistent themes for Mr. Briggs, a melancholic soul. Later in life, he told an interviewer that he contemplated suicide after his wife Jean died of leukemia in 1973, two years after the death of his parents.
In “The Snowman,” unlike Mr. Briggs’ other books, there are no words, but the rounded frames contain the emotional arc of the boy’s winter adventures. He rejoices in the fresh snow, gleefully exploring homes and countries with snowmen that magically come to life, and looks down on his green hat and scarf in the overwhelmed final panel.
Nicollette Jones, who wrote the biography Raymond Briggs (2020), said in an obituary interview, “The book is funny, and the book is also sad.” I walk a tightrope.”
The 1982 film adaptation of The Snowman, featuring the haunting “Walk in the Sky” from the symphony, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Mr. Briggs briefly set the scene to his chagrin by David Bowie in the introduction to the film, which was later re-recorded. “He was horribly wrong. It’s hopeless,” Mr Briggs told the BBC.
His frustration extended to the brief appearance of Father Christmas in the film. I can’t see any presents on his page.
In his previous book, Santa’s Christmas (1973), Mr. Briggs portrayed the giver not as a cheerful soul, but as an old man plagued by frigid weather and hard work. He was delivered to the toilet complaining “I hate winter!”
That irreverent wit was integral to When the Wind Blows, a satirical graphic novel published during the height of the Cold War. The book has been adapted several times, including a radio dramatization and a West End play starring Patricia Routledge.
Before imminent nuclear annihilation, husbands paint windows white and build shelters to lean on, wives worry about staining curtains and marking walls. Frame on frame of frantic readiness and idle chatter is interrupted by the gray expanse of missiles or submarines.
The explosion itself fills two pages with shades of white and pink.
After setting aside symptoms such as fever, loss of appetite and mottled blue spots on their hands and feet, the couple died after struggling to remember their prayers.
Raymond Redvers Briggs was born on January 18, 1934 in Wimbledon, London, the only child of Ethel (Bowyer) Briggs, a maid, and Ernest Briggs, a milkman. During World War II, he was sent briefly to live with his rural aunt.
Growing up in a home of few books, he gravitated instead to the storytelling found in newspaper cartoons. He studied at the Wimbledon School of Art as a teenager, and after two years as a draftsman in the Royal Signal Corps of the British Army, he graduated from the Slade School of Art in 1957.
Briggs dabbled in professional portraiture before focusing on illustration. His first commission for tulip and daffodil bulbs for House & Garden magazine eventually followed with an anthology of mythical beasts and Cornish fairy tales.
He drew nearly 900 illustrations for Mother Goose Treasury (1966) in 18 months and won the Kate Greenaway Medal for the best British children’s book.
With more ideas than could fit in a traditional picture book, Mr. Briggs added writing to his repertoire for artistic and financial reasons, but he also wrote comic strips for Father’s Christmas, which also won the Kate Greenaway Medal. debuted the approach of
“I’ve stuck with that method ever since, and it’s very annoying,” he said. told the BBC’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ 1983.
After his wife’s death, Briggs dated Liz Benjamin, who died of Parkinson’s disease in 2015, for 40 years. “The Puddleman” (2004) is dedicated to Mr. Benjamin’s three grandchildren.
Mr. Briggs taught illustration part-time at the Brighton School of Art from 1961 to 1986. He didn’t like to leave England, East. The ceiling of the living room was covered with maps. Portraits of his parents hung on the cupboard door.
He evoked them repeatedly in his books—his mother’s wide face, his father’s blue-collar job, their longtime home. In “Father’s Christmas,” the only person the title character interacts with is the milkman, who also makes his rounds before 6am.
A book about his parents’ long relationship and their traumatic death, “Ethel and Ernest,” was awarded the annual 1999 British Book Awards, which declared Mr. Briggs the child’s writer of the year. Nominated for Best Picture Book. .
In his last published work, Time for Lights Out (2019), Mr. Briggs combines quotes, sketches and poetry to explore a theme that has fascinated him throughout his life: the inevitability of death.
