‘The Snowman’, ‘When The Wind Blows’ illustrator Raymond Briggs dies at 88

The author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, best known for his 1978 work The Snowman, passed away yesterday, August 9, aged 88.

Briggs produced a wealth of books including an illustrated book of nursery rhymes, The Mother Goose Treasury (1966), Father Christmas (1973), Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (1975), Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), When the Wind Blows (1982) and The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (1984).

Many of his works, which were largely based on themes of love and loss, have been adapted into films, plays and TV animations.

The producer John Coates turned his most famous work, The Snowman, into a much-loved animation which was first broadcast by Channel 4 on Boxing Day 1982 and has been screened by the broadcaster every Christmas since.

Coates also produced the 1986 feature film adaptation of When The Wind Blows, directed by Jimmy Murakami, about a rural English couple’s attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack.

Briggs’ 1998 graphic novel Ethel & Ernest, based on the real experiences of his milkman father and lady’s maid mother, was also adapted by Coates into an animated feature film in 2016.

His final book, Time for Lights Out, is a collection of poems, sketches and observations about old age and death, and was published in 2019.

This story first appeared on Screen’s sister site Broadcast