He may be best known as the creator of the iconic and beloved Father Christmas The Snowman Raymond Briggs was a prolific artist and author whose imagination brought us so many stories full of warmth and wit – stories that celebrate the beauty of ordinary lives, the magic of childhood curiosity and the joy of a good cup of tea.
Told entirely without words – through beautiful illustrations – The Snowman is a bittersweet story about a boy whose snowman comes to life one magical winter’s night. After the boy introduces the snowman to his house and all his human things (the chest freezer goes down a treat; the fireplace and cooker less so!), the snowman takes the boy on a fantastical journey. They fly together over the snowy South Downs and a silent Brighton Pavilion before catching the sunrise at the end of Brighton Pier. It’s an inherently cinematic story with its sweeping landscapes dowsed in wintry moonlight and is one of several Briggs picture books created in a strip-cartoon style: so it’s a natural precursor to the beloved Christmas film. And, of course, the tale ends with a touching and unforgettable sequence: after his night of adventure, the boy leaps out of bed, sprints downstairs, and runs into the garden full of anticipation – but snowmen don’t last forever.
“My favourite magical moment in a Raymond Briggs book is in The Snowman , when the boy and his new friend fly across Brighton’s Royal Pavilion. As the adventure gathers pace and the snowman and the boy take flight, the illustrations burst out of their smaller frames culminating in this epic scene which is given a double page spread. It’s an incredible landscape scene with the iconic Pavilion luminous and lit from within and the boy and his Snowman have become tiny dots, flying high in the sky.”Jen, Brand PR & Communications
“Blooming Christmas here again!” grumbles the down-to-earth Father Christmas in this hilarious and irreverent Christmas story. Dedicated to his parents, Briggs’s unique, comic take on a legendary character won the Kate Greenaway Medal and has been entertaining families for over 50 years. This is a Father Christmas who is overworked, exhausted and grumpy about his job (“Blooming snow!”, “Blooming chimneys!”). But he also has a gentle side when it comes to his cat, his dog and his reindeer – and he has a relatable penchant for a good pot of tea, a cosy pair of slippers and some nice clean socks. There are so many charming and funny details to spot in the illustrations, too – whether it’s the posters all over his home for Majorca, Capri and Malta; or the moment when we see his silhouette teetering off the side of a lighthouse as he shouts into the night: “Daft place to live!”. The sequel, Father Christmas Goes On Holiday
“I have always loved Raymond’s grumpy Father Christmas, and I loved him even more when I discovered he was partly based on Raymond’s own father, a milkman who also worked the gruelling early-morning shift. In fact, Raymond drew his father into the book – he crosses paths with Father Christmas as he comes to the end of his round and says ‘Still at it, mate?’ As a cameo it is touching, charming and totally un-sentimental.”Anna, Editorial
“My brother and I LOVED Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas when we were little because he’s so grumpy! The image of Father Christmas sitting on the toilet and saying he hates winter is perfection.”Jasmine, Publicity
When a beautiful polar bear climbs into Tilly’s bedroom window one winter evening, she makes an instant new friend. She tells her parents, orders extra milk from the milkman and shares her pear-blossom bubble bath with the bear for his extra-splashy bath-time. With his thick fur, slow heartbeat and unwieldy size, the polar bear makes himself quietly comfortable in the house, “like a great big white ghost”, and Tilly discovers he needs a lot of looking after. The ending is a Briggs special: tender and poignant, as the bear moves on, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow and Tilly standing at the window. The closing frames are incredibly moving: a polar bear swimming back to his home under an orange Arctic sunrise. This stunningly illustrated story is perfect for fans of The Snowman and would make for a beautiful Christmas gift.
“I loved The Bear as a child and still revisit it often: it has one of my favourite father-daughter relationships of any picture book, a magical snowy landscape, a gorgeous milky polar bear, and a touching nod to the sometimes-fleeting-ness of friendships.”Tash, Brand Marketing
In this joyful and exuberant picture book, written by Elfrida Vipont and illustrated by Raymond Briggs, an elephant meets a baby and offers him a ride on his back. The double-act proceeds to spend a lovely day exploring the town together and helping themselves to yummy treats along the way. The elephant’s trunk comes in handy for swiping ice-creams, pies, buns and chocolates, but soon all of the town’s business owners are chasing them down the road. And when the Elephant realises that the Bad Baby hasn’t once said “please”, the only possible solution is conciliatory tea and pancakes for everyone! Featuring delicious colour illustrations alongside stylish ink drawings, this read-aloud classic with its rhythmic repetition will delight the whole family as the book’s duo go “rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road”.
“I have such strong memories of my Mum reading me The Elephant and the Bad Baby and I was captured by Raymond’s illustrations getting more elaborate and silly as the story went on. I can particularly remember loving all the details of the sweet shop illustration filled with Turkish delight, hard-boiled sweets and lollipops!”Monica, Design
Winner of the Smarties Book Prize Silver Award and described by Guardian Education as an “outstanding book”, Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age and His Search for Soft Trousers is still taught in primary schools across the UK. In this Stone Age story, full of entertaining anachronisms, the young Ug is dismayed at how uncomfortable his stone trousers are and wishes trousers could be made of something softer, like woolly mammoth skin. But his parents dismiss his dreams – of softer trousers, hotter food and bouncier footballs – as “daft”; a symptom of his “thinking too much”. Ug remains entrepreneurial and constantly looks for solutions like trying to build boats from trees or bring fire into the cave to warm it up. And, while he might not quite achieve his wish for the perfect soft trousers by the end of the story, this book blisters with rebellion. It’s wonderfully critical of the defeatist compulsion to do things the way they’ve always been done, and it celebrates childhood curiosity, outside-the-box thinking and enduring hope, encouraging us all to actively question the hand we’ve been dealt.
Originally published as The Mother Goose Treasury , The Puffin Book of Nursery Rhymes is another Kate Greenaway Medal-winner from Raymond Briggs. It contains over 250 nursery rhymes including a vast array of famous favourites like ‘Oranges and Lemons’, ‘Pat-a-Cake’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty’, as well as plenty of less familiar rhymes like ‘The Three Ghostesses’, ‘The Love Sick Frog’ or ‘Wibbleton and Wobbleton’. Briggs’s colourful and whimsical illustrations are the perfect accompaniment, with plenty of comic details for younger readers to enjoy – from Mother Hubbard’s perplexed frown at her bare cupboard; to the postman turning up with his mail-sack in one hand and a partridge-in-a-pear-tree in the other. In his 2010 foreword to the collection, Briggs says: “It was wonderful, back in 1964, to be offered this amazing job. The editor wanted it to be the biggest colour-illustrated Mother Goose ever, and it still is today.” This is a treasury you could pore over for many years and still find something new every time.
In this fresh and funny reimagining of the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale, a young boy named Jim climbs up a beanstalk one morning in his pyjamas – but the giant he finds in the castle at the top is old, lonely and sad. His eyesight is so bad that he can’t read his poetry books anymore and he’s lost his teeth so he can’t even tuck into his favourite meal (three fried boys on a slice of toast!). Jim befriends the giant and helps source some glasses, some false teeth and a wig for him – affording him a new lease of life. Unfortunately, the giant also gets his appetite back, so Jim has to zip off down the beanstalk to avoid becoming dinner! The hilarious illustrations will make little ones laugh, as Jim walks through his local town carrying a giant pair of false teeth or a giant wig, much to the confusion and amazement of his neighbours.
For older readers
Part guide to the “Bogeydom” for the uninitiated, and part a night-in-the-life of the eponymous hero, Fungus the Bogeyman is a truly gross book whose oozings of snot, slime and scum are sure to capture the imaginations of anyone who’s fascinated by revolting details. Most suited to adults, it’s written and illustrated in Briggs’s trademark strip cartoon style, and we follow Fungus as he goes about his job of scaring vicars, waking sleeping babies, tapping on bedroom windows with a big stick and turning doorknobs very slowly. But this bogeyman doesn’t delight in scaring people: he just doesn’t really know what else to do. “I wish I knew if it had any point”, he wonders to himself while making his rounds. Briggs’s imaginative world-building drips off every page: from the local oditorium where Bogies go to enjoy bad smells emitted from a majestic Odour Organ, to the oldspaper headlines they read over their breakfast marmamuck . Described by the Evening Standard as “a revolting book” and by The Times as “a truly vile creation”, it’s not for the squeamish!
In 1928, a lady’s maid is cleaning a window when a man on a bicycle waves to her. A love story is born that will go on to span five remarkable decades full of landmark twentieth-century moments. In the 30s, the couple wave their son off at the train station as he’s evacuated to the countryside. In the 40s, they string up Christmas tinsel while they marvel at the newly-announced National Health Service. The blitz, rationing, VE Day, green belts, new towns, televisions, the moon landing: all are chronicled in this tender graphic memoir of Briggs’s own parents’ lives: from the moment they met at the window until their deaths, only months apart, in 1971. A book for adults, that is brimming with affection for both characters’ interests, passions and foibles, this is an incredibly moving account of family, love and loss, including starkly-remembered moments from Briggs’s own childhood.
Another of Briggs’s books for adults – and his final book – Time For Lights Out is a compendium of short reflections, including poems, sketches, photographs, drawings and written observations. At its heart, it’s an exploration of ageing, with both wry humour and inevitable sadness. Split into three sections, “Then”, “Now” and “Soon”, Briggs shares snippets of his creative life – like the “Cerulean Blues and Ultramarines” of his crayon pots – alongside memories of loved ones, his parents, his schooldays, his time as an evacuee, and so much more. There is grief and heartbreak, and there are dog walks and days with grandchildren. In the poem Future Ghosts , he jokes about the spirits who’ll haunt his Sussex home after his death and how they might judge his belongings: “You should have seen the stuff / he stuck up in the attic! / Snowman this and snowman that / Tons and tons of tat.” And that sums up this collection well: with dry humour, it asks frank and emotive questions about old age, about what comes next and how we are remembered.
