Raymond Redvers Briggs (1934-2022)
Raymond Briggs was born at Wimbledon Park, South London on 18 January 1934, and attended Rutlish School, Merton. His earliest ambition was to be a jouralist, but the illustrations to periodicals, especially Punch, encouraged him to decide in favour of cartooning. He studied painting at Wimbledon School of Art (1949- 53) and, after National Service, at the Slade School of Fine Art (1955-57).
Turning from painting to illustration, he began to produce children's books and, since 1961, has written many of his own texts. An accomplished draughtsman, he works in line and watercolour, gouache, pencil and crayons. He has twice won the Kate Greenaway medal, for The Mother Goose Treasury (1966) and Father Christmas (1973), the first book in which he adopted the strip-cartoon format that he has since used frequently.
His miserable, begrudging Santa was soon followed by a number of other memorable eccentrics, partly conceived as portraits of both himself and his father: Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), Gentleman Jim (1980), Unlucky Wally (1987) and, The Man (1992). Briggs has reworked and adapted several of his books: as pop-up versions, as plays for the theatre and radio, and as animated cartoons. In 1982, an animated version of The Snowman, a wordless story given a musical score by Howard Blake, won an Oscar nomination, the BAFTA children's award and the European Prix Jeunesse.
He was a part-time lecturer in illustration at Brighton Polytechnic between 1961-87. Despite his distinctive, yet, varied, visual style, ranging from the delicacy of The Snowman (1978) to the bleakness of much of When the Wind Blows (1983), he had a particular affection for the medium of radio and seriously considered giving up illustration in order to concentrate on writing. Briggs continued to work on both illustration and writing from his home in Sussex, until his death on 9 August 2022.
