Raymond Briggs’s Fungus the Bogeyman displayed an extreme version of the author’s own tendency to be outspoken and impatient.
The illustrator John Lawrence, who was also published by Hamish Hamilton, recalled those days with great fondness: “All the talk was about ‘is the world ready for Fungus the Bogeyman?’ and we all turned up at the launch party in green wellingtons surrounded by buckets of suspicious-looking green liquid, wondering whether it might be the wine.” Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) could also be seen as a character very much close to home, displaying as he does an extreme version of the author’s own tendency to be outspoken and impatient.Īt Hamish Hamilton the newly arrived editor Julia MacRae (later to set up her own imprint) played a major role in developing the artist’s career. The author’s VW Camper van would make regular appearances too. His own childhood home and Loch Fyne holidays appear regularly and he himself pops up in the follow-up, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday (1975).īriggs can be found standing ahead of Father Christmas in the queue for a shave at the campsite, along with the illustrator John Vernon Lord (sporting his initials on his wash bag). Photograph: © Raymond BriggsĪs with all Briggs’s subsequent titles, the book is full of autobiographical elements and references. Raymond Briggs’s artwork for Father Christmas, about a grumbling, flawed Santa. His grumbling, lavatorial and flawed Santa was immensely popular. Father Christmas brought him a second, and catapulted him to fame.
A major breakthrough had already come in 1966, with The Mother Goose Treasury, for which he received his first Kate Greenaway medal. Her death from leukaemia in 1973, and the deaths of his parents, led Briggs to throw himself into his work. In 1963 Briggs had married the painter Jean Taprell Clark. He continued to teach for a day a week at Brighton until 1987, and his tuition was much admired and appreciated by generations of artists including the prolific illustrator and Observer political cartoonist Chris Riddell. That year, he began teaching illustration part-time at Brighton College of Art (now Brighton University’s faculty of arts) at the invitation of the then head of department, the calligrapher and engraver John R Biggs. In 1961 he wrote and illustrated two books, Midnight Adventure and The Strange House, for the publishers Hamish Hamilton, with whom he would have a lasting working relationship. Photograph: © Raymond BriggsĪs various narrative texts came his way, he realised that not all of them were of the highest quality, and took to writing himself. Raymond Briggs’s illustrations for his 1978 book The Snowman, which was adapted into a film in 1982.
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