‘He was always desperate to avoid being schmoozed at parties’: the Raymond Briggs I knew

I first met Raymond at a publishing party 50 years ago, and he was doing what he always did: checking his watch. He had to make the last train home, he’d tell anyone who asked, desperate to dash off from the schmoozing as fast as he could.

He was definitely a cynic, and earned a reputation for being grumpy, and that was accurate – he’d criticise writers, publishers and illustrators in equal measure. He certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly – particularly those who tried to tell him what to do – either.

But he was so funny with it: you always knew to take what he said with a pinch of salt. And he was terribly kind, too. Everyone adored him – particularly at those parties he was so keen to leave. At another, I met his students from Brighton School of Art, and they couldn’t have spoken more highly of their teacher.

Raymond had endured a lot of sadness – losing his first wife, Jean, who had schizophrenia, to leukaemia around the same time Father Christmas was published in 1973. He also survived his second partner, Liz, who passed away from Parkinson’s in 2015 – an ordeal he described as “sad and appalling”. I met him in the 1970s, around the time of Jean’s death, so I was never quite sure whether the melancholy set in as a result, or if that had always been his way.

But I think losing her had a profound effect on him, and I’m not sure that he ever got over it. Losing Liz, too, must have been devastating. There was a sense of loneliness to him that appeared to grow as time went on.

The only times I’d see Raymond departing from his usual cynicism were when he was with my husband [the late children’s author and illustrator] John Burningham. Perhaps the pair had bonded over both writing and illustrating their own work, which isn’t all too common in our industry. They teased each other mercilessly – truly, about anything and everything – and were always bantering, and playing tricks on each other. They had such great fun, playing off each other to see who could go one further.

Raymond’s writing and illustrations had that rare quality of being equally brilliant, which really is an unusual skill. (I did wonder sometimes if he took on all of that work himself in order to avoid dealing with other people.)

The best thing about his stories was how he always championed the underdog. Each tale had these subtle layers to them, like peeling back the skin of an onion, and finding something deeper beneath. Adults would get that deeper meaning, while children would simply roll around with laughter at the stories he’d concocted.

Like Father Christmas (the character Raymond most closely resembled) The Snowman is so wonderfully multi-layered, beyond being a lovely adventure that children can enjoy – it’s no wonder that those books have become so beloved. But in our house, there was no question which was his best: I must have read The Elephant and the Bad Baby to my children every night for months. I loved that; I absolutely loved that, as did they. It’s such a well-thought out little book.

Given Raymond’s enormous contribution to children’s literature, I might have expected him to be more widely celebrated throughout his life.

But in truth, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to be – he shunned all the accolades and attention, and had famously turned down the opportunity to be children’s laureate many years ago. He never wanted any great fanfare, just to do the work he loved. He really was one of the best, though, and his books will long be here to prove it.

As told to Charlotte Lytton. Helen Oxenbury is the illustrator of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and ‘Welcome to the World’