Raymond Briggs: A Celebration

The Snowman has become an integral part of the British Christmas, with its come-to-life hero taking a small dressing-gowned boy for an adventure Walking in the Air. It's a 20th-century equivalent of Charles Dickens's tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

When The Snowman's creator, Raymond Briggs, applied to go to art school at the age of 15, his interviewer was horrified to hear that he wanted to be a cartoonist. Today, he might be even more horrified to find out about Bloomin' Brilliant: The Life and Work of Raymond Briggs at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in East Sussex.  

Briggs, who died two years ago, lived just a mile down the road from Ditchling, in the shadow of the South Downs. This joyful celebratory show looks back on a 60-year career that also gave us Fungus the Bogeyman, Father Christmas, When the Wind Blows and the story of his parents, Ethel and Ernest. Cartoons, picture books, graphic novels, for children perhaps, but actually for readers of all ages. The subject matter can sometimes be a little bleak, but these are books packed with characters who highlight human foibles and crammed with witty jibes at life's absurdities. "I like to take a fantastical figure, imagine him to be real, and proceed from that," Briggs said. 

There's a lot of original artwork and a lot of personal memorabilia. Below is Briggs's desk, with its masses of pens and pencils, bright lamp and movable magnifying glass, the foundry at which his creations were forged. 

To the right of the desk, portraits of his parents that he painted on the cupboard doors of his living room. "I still dislike the sticky mess of oil paint," Briggs once said. "I have no wish to be part of that world. You reach so few people by that method compared with books." 

And here's Fungus, with a shelf full of those books as you enter the exhibition. If you've got small children, you might want to leave them to happily leaf through the copies as you wander round looking at the artwork on the walls.  

Cartooning, you might think, it looks so simple. But Briggs's working method was anything but quick. Pages would be drafted in pencil first, with the initial drawings photocopied and the photocopies being coloured in. "Inking in the first spontaneous pencil drawing often kills it stone dead," Briggs said. On show are drawings at various stages in the process, with meticulous marginal notes on changes to be made, or recording how many frames done per hour: 1 3/4 from 10:45 to 1:30 on Monday December 22, 1980 on When the Wind Blows, for example. Hand-lettering each double-page spread of Fungus the Bogeyman took four hours. 

On leaving art school, Briggs found he picked up work as an illustrator straight away. "After six years at art school doing these endless paintings and putting them away afterwards.... suddenly you start doing commercial work and there was this man actually waiting to see what you've done. On top of that, he was going to give you money for it! That was even more incredible." Even if he was initially a little underwhelmed to be asked to illustrate nursery rhymes and the like, being asked by an editor: "How do you feel about fairies?"

Thus started a career that saw Briggs develop as an illustrator of other people's stories before moving on to his own. He's approaching his mature style in The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont from 1969. 

"The baby is supposed to be bad because it doesn't say please, but the elephant is a thief, always stealing things," Briggs said. "I never quite understood that." 

Before Fungus the Bogeyman and The Snowman came Father Christmas, in 1973, one of the first British picture books to use a comic-strip format. The title character is a cantankerous working-class delivery man who hates the winter -- and the snow. Briggs described the job as "a cross between a postman, a milkman, a coalman and a sweep. It is cold, lonely, hard and dirty. No wonder he grumbles a lot."

Briggs's Santa mutters about "blooming chimneys", "blooming aerials" and "stairs, stairs, stairs." In one frame, a milkman -- Briggs's father was a milkman -- asks Father Christmas if he's "still at it, mate?" "Nearly done," Santa replies. "Only one more, now." And here's the final destination below.

One frame memorably shows Father Christmas sitting on the toilet. Elsewhere in the show, you can read the letter of complaint sent to Briggs by an American pastor's wife after her 6-year-old son borrowed the book from the library. "I was upset to see one of the pictures portraying Santa performing an act of personal hygiene. Also the notations indicating that he cursed. The entire story is negative and very depressing," she wrote. "You definitely owe an apology to all children who read this book." 

In 1980, Briggs created Gentleman Jim, who works as a toilet cleaner while dreaming of a more exciting life -- being an artist, perhaps, in Paris, with "lady models all bare" (and puffing a cigarette while posing). A bow-tied American declares that "this guy Bloggs is a genius," but Jim realises he needs "The Levels" even to study art. So that's another avenue closed.  

In the 1980s, Briggs's books grew more political, most lastingly in When the Wind Blows, in which Jim and his wife Hilda follow to the letter government instructions to prepare for a nuclear attack. Well, almost. As the three-minute warning is given, Hilda still wants to go and get the washing in.  

Jim and Hilda have elements of Briggs's parents in them, and there's much artwork from Ethel and Ernest, bringing together his constant themes of social mobility, family relationships, nostalgia and grief.

And, as Briggs observed, "everyone has to do a bear book, sooner or later. It's compulsory."  

The fantastic fluffy fur of The Bear that climbs in Tilly's window seems to fill the entire page.  

There's a lot more in this show; artwork from many more books; a film of Briggs talking about his work; a whole cabinet of tableware and china honouring his characters from around the world. It's a hugely enjoyable and uplifting exhibition.

Practicalities

Bloomin' Brilliant: The Life and Work of Raymond Briggs can be seen at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in East Sussex until October 27. The museum is open from Wednesday to Sunday, as well as on Bank Holidays, from 1030 to 1700. Full-price admission costs £10 including Gift Aid, £9 without, and you can book tickets online here. Allow up to 90 minutes to see this show; you'll probably find yourself reading a lot of the text in the illustrations. 

Ditchling village is about 25 minutes walk from Hassocks station on the London-Brighton line; there are 2 trains an hour from Victoria and 2 from London Bridge, each taking just under an hour. There's a free car park close to the museum. 

With a bit of planning, you could get to see the Raymond Briggs show as well as the very different experience of Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story at Charleston in Lewes on the same day. There are a handful of buses between Ditchling and Lewes on weekdays, or take the train, changing at Brighton or Haywards Heath. 

Images

Exhibition view of desk used by Raymond Briggs (1934-2022) and cupboard-door paintings of his parents from his home. Photo: Rosie Powell

Selection of Raymond Briggs's books in exhibition

Butcher's page spread from The Elephant and the Bad Baby. © Text Elfrida Vipont Foulds, illustrations Raymond Briggs, 1969
Buckingham Palace page spread from Father Christmas. © Raymond Briggs, 1973
The Artist page spread from Gentleman Jim. © Raymond Briggs, 1980, 2008
When the Wind Blows page spread. © Raymond Briggs, 1982
Window page spread from The Bear. © Raymond Briggs, 1994