Daisy Dunn

The grumpy genius of Raymond Briggs

No one captures the ambivalence that many of us feel towards Christmas better than this master illustrator

The winter’s tale: Santa touching down on Briggs’s childhood terrace in Wimbledon Park in his 1973 book Father Christmas

Raymond Briggs has often spoken of his annoyance at being associated with Christmas. His Snowman may fly across our screens each Christmas day, but in the book there is no Father Christmas, no sleigh, and certainly no figgy pud. The North Pole scene featuring the jolly elf was written into the story for John Coates’s TV adaptation in 1982 and struck Briggs as rather mawkish at the time.

As readers and viewers of Father Christmas know, Briggs’s Papa Noël is anyway rather a grouch at this time of year. As if the cold isn’t enough for him to contend with, there are the chimneys, the tasteless presents, and, oh yes, ‘blooming Christmas’ itself. If he had a favourite character, you could bet it would be Scrooge, and a favourite song, ‘Fairytale of New York’. Anyone with a more suitable list of ingredients for Christmas 2020 can send it to C-19, Humbug Way.

Briggs, now 86, has been called ‘the poet laureate of British grumpiness’. His curmudgeonly persona — ‘a kind of shyness’, says Nicolette Jones, who has just written a beautiful new book on his life’s work — has won him generations of admirers. To the delight of schmaltz-haters everywhere, his crankiness filters through to many of his characters, including my personal favourite, The Man, a minuscule slob who turns his nose up at everything and grumbles when he’s mistaken for a Borrower: ‘Don’t approve of credit.’

Briggs encapsulates perhaps better than any other artist or writer alive the ambivalence that many of us feel towards the season. While claiming to hate it — ‘He likes to play up the “fed up with Christmas” stance,’ says Jones, ‘but anyone who knows him knows he’s extremely kindly and generous and self-effacing’ — he has turned to it more than a few times in his work, and with such success that an association was inevitable.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in