Raymond Briggs: Blooming Marvellous - Esther

This week, the great artist & writer Raymond Briggs (1934-2022) died. He had a long & eventful life & his shuffling off feels significant. It’s as if a gatekeeper of certain values, memories & a particular brand of melancholy has been relieved of his duties. Since he never seemed to retire entirely, I suppose it is a little like that. He is best known for his picture books, but he also wrote other stories for children as well as poetry. In spite or perhaps because of the hardships he experienced in life, he never flinched from the important artistic duty of telling the truth. He would put into his art what many others would certainly shy away from or try to cover up. Raymond wanted to be a cartoonist from a very young age & whilst an incredibly gifted artist with a great eye for observation & detail, he was also a storyteller. If art’s job is to communicate all that is human, then stories are a large part of art. Raymond’s work was all about the tasks & stories of being human.

 

Many people’s first or only encounter with Raymond is through his Snowman. The Snowman (1978) is now legendary for being an animated film, introduced by David Bowie & having a certain well-known song associated with it. You can tell the story is very famous because it’s been parodied & reimagined for adverts. You can tell the song is very famous because sometimes people sing rude versions of the song & everyone seems to get it. The makers of The Snowman film tried their best to remain faithful to the book in appearance, style & atmosphere & it’s largely a good representation.

Artistically, The Snowman book is drawn in a beautiful, subtle & oddly loose style. The drawings contain enough detail to be believable & the palette is light but muted. Where they are coloured in, the pencil lines are very clear – you’re never given the impression this is anything other than a dreamlike story of magic. It’s a lesson too in how many shades of white can be achieved with coloured pencil. 

The story works so well because the situations Raymond puts the Snowman in are basically relatable human situations. When he starts heating up, he goes to sit in the deep freezer & there’s a beautiful frame where he’s blissed out & comfy, as we might sit on a sofa at the end of a hard day. Despite your affinity & sympathy with the Snowman as you read, it is really the little boy you relate to. You see the Snowman through his eyes & equally you lose him through the boy. Although he’s very pally & does ordinary things you’d expect any real person to do, you’re constantly aware the Snowman is magical – you never feel you could be him - & you are always aware that he will go. It’s a profound metaphor & in the book, boy & Snowman have lots of adventures. In that short time, they pack in a lifetime’s worth of fun, despite knowing what will ultimately happen. If that’s not an important lesson for life, I don’t know what is.

In some ways The Snowman was a response to Briggs’s previous book Fungus the Bogeyman (1977). In it, everything was disgusting & dark which was how Fungus liked it. Everything humans liked was overturned to create a kind of opposite world to our own. Again, Raymond stuck to a specific colour palette which helped invest you in this other realm. 

As well as writing exceptionally personal stories about the people & events in his life, Raymond wrote & drew about the world events that upset, angered or worried him. Staunchly anti-war, he wrote & illustrated the terrifying When the Wind Blows (1982), the story of how a British couple are affected by nuclear war. As intended, it’s incredibly depressing & shocking & was motivated partly by the moronic advice people were being given about how to respond in the event of a nuclear attack. Artistic risks are also taken, given that this is a graphic novel; for two whole pages there’s a virtual white-out to represent the bomb blast. Later, we see the painfully ordinary coping of the couple becoming sick & deteriorating.

Similarly furious about the Falklands War, Raymond wrote & illustrated The Tin-Pot Foreign General & the Old Iron Woman (1984). His obvious feelings about the war chimed with many of ours – that this was a waste of time, money & most importantly life. To put it another way, it was a vanity war, a legacy war for those in charge. Although real people or events are never explicitly named, the “Thatcher” character is vicious & portrayed in a Ralph Steadman-esque style, so different from the more gentle children’s book styles of Raymond’s previous works.

But, it was his Father Christmas (1973) book that made me - & my family – fall in love with Raymond’s work. It’s the first example of a graphic novel that I can remember reading/owning & it had everything we liked: wit, mild scatological humour, animals, great drawings, a catchphrase & irreverence. The idea that Santa could be irritated to the point of rage by Christmas seemed like a form of blasphemy. Referring to everything as “blooming” this or that worked for us as kids as it was on the cusp of being a swear. 

Father Christmas is a great character because he’s recognisable. Unlike the unreachable Snowman, his magic is grounded in routine, mundanity & chores: early mornings, cold toilet seats, having a bath, packed lunches, looking after pets. Even looking at them, smiling at them now, the drawings are delightful. 

Santa’s facial expressions, gestures & actions are all so beautifully observed & depicted. You can hear him breathing through his nose as he brushes his beard & does up his buttons. You can feel the heat as his blood pressure rises in increasing rage. 

Even Raymond’s own father makes an appearance as the milkman. Father Christmas is a wonderful portal to my childhood & my family gathered enjoying something together. That this can collectively happen to loved ones through art & books is a very special thing.

I’ve mentioned Raymond’s details a couple of times. The bricks, the wallpaper, the patterns on soft furnishings all go to making his work that bit more believable & yet magical all at once. There is a great story he told however where his attention to detail caught him out. About Father Christmas a child wrote to him pointing out that when Santa is making his sandwiches, he cuts them one way, but when we see the sandwiches later, they’re cut in another. “Fancy a kid noticing that!” he exclaimed. “I sent him a letter back saying, ‘That’s absolutely brilliant!’”

Raymond Briggs: we salute you.