Snowman creator Raymond Briggs dies aged 88

He didn’t like snow or the cold. And yet Raymond Briggs, who has died aged 88, was the author of The Snowman, that Christmas perennial beloved by generations of children and their parents Briggs is probably best known for his animated Christmas story The Snowman, which was later made into a film A fierce streak of anger burned through many, most notoriously When The Wind Blows — a depiction of a nuclear attack on Britain, imagining the slow, painful death of a couple, just like his parents, from radiation poisoning. ‘In England,’ Raymond later explained, ‘the strip cartoon is regarded as a low-class thing — like spitting in church. The anxiety starts in October — how many are coming, are they bringing children, how long will they stay?’ Briggs was born into humble beginnings to his milkman father Ernest and housewife Ethel in Wimbledon in 1934 Despite the ‘huge amounts of money’ generated by The Snowman, he shopped in charity stores, proud to wear second-hand shirts that cost £3, and always insisted that he didn’t know what he was worth. One of them, Connie, made him very happy when, aged three-and-a-half, she inspected him and announced, ‘Raymond is not a normal person.’ Children everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief.