Jonathan Cape have done Briggs proud with top quality production: thick, creamy paper, generous space, and excellent reproduction of his stark pencil drawings. In 1958, he illustrated Peter and the Piskies: Cornish Folk and Fairy Tales, a fairy tale anthology by Ruth Manning-Sanders that was published by Oxford University Press. That same readiness to look horror in the eye, and get it down on paper in a domestic context, was what made When the Wind Blows, his 1982 graphic novel about an old couple during nuclear war, so powerful. A poignant read, given new significance after the recent death of the author who brought us classics like The Snowman, Father Christmas and When The Wind Blows. Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek Explorer (previously known as Star Trek Magazine) and more.

Time For Lights Out by Raymond Briggs | Waterstones

Illustrated with Briggs's inimitable pencil drawings, Time for Lights Out is a collection of short pieces, some funny, some melancholy, some remembering his wife who died young, others about the joy of grandchildren, of walking the dog. Although he bemoaned his tutors’ failure to recognise a “natural illustrator”, the formal training that he received imbued in Briggs a strong sense of structure and of the importance of good draughtsmanship. I have loved his work since Mother Goose Treasury days (my mother with an eye to excellent quality children's books) and I know he's not really 'cosy', and I like that. When he eventually arrived at the film version of The Snowman, he expressed pleasure at how it so faithfully and painstakingly replicated his coloured-pencil technique, despite the massively labour-intensive approach that this necessitated. Briggs’ inimitable illustrations are a mix of finely rendered drawings and more blurred images – appropriate when conveying the speed at which time passes (and perhaps the deterioration of eyesight) when on life’s downhill trajectory.

We know that Raymond’s books were loved by and touched millions of people around the world, who will be sad to hear this news. The contents of the book are a mixture of: pencil drawn illustrations, comic strips, poems, photographs, quotes, lists, and short opinion pieces. Divided into three sections – Now, Then, Soon – they offer a picture of the life Briggs has lived and his concerns about its end. In Time for Lights Out, which from the title on explores the correlations between childhood and old age, the subjects that have moved him all his career become only more intensely felt. He reads newspaper obituary pages and feels a sense of achievement when he is older than the recently deceased.

Raymond Briggs | Books | The Guardian Raymond Briggs | Books | The Guardian

There are a few books which are obviously for small children,” he told the Guardian in 1999, “but I don’t usually think about whether a book is for children or adults. Although searingly honest about an aging body’s failings and inevitable future, the tone is more reflective than bleak. Also, he seems to have taken to just photocopying a few ideas and illuminating them with his own fading persona, such as his hand holding a bewildering TV remote with "a flap on our first remote control accidentally opened and 21 more --buttons-- were revealed, 129 buttons in all. Raymond's unique characterisation of Father Christmas is based on his father - 'Father Christmas and the milkman both have wretched jobs: working in the cold, wet and dark. Despite acknowledging the need for a film to be commercially viable, Briggs told the Guardian in 2015 that he hated it at the time and still found it corny.

A career spanning six decades brought him numerous awards, with television adaptations making him a fixture of British Christmas viewing. I felt I didn't want to be sucked into agreeing with him, and he saw himself as old and close to death long before it happened, two, nearly three years after the book was published (and still rather raw for his fans) All this makes some revelations of his continuing appreciation of pulchritude the more jarring - much to reflect on there (lines crossed) but also worth the reader reminding herself that he has always gone out of his way to try to avoid canonisation and cuddliness, desperate to tell us he's not nice. 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). Briggs looks back at his schooldays and his time as an evacuee during the war, and remembers his parents and the house in which he grew up. Hilary Delamere, Briggs’s literary agent, said: “Raymond liked to act the professional curmudgeon, but we will remember him for his stories of love and of loss.

Raymond Briggs’ “Time For Lights Out” due in November Raymond Briggs’ “Time For Lights Out” due in November

It was the animation that brought in troops of dancing snowmen around a jolly Santa Claus – and it took many “liquid lunches” before Briggs agreed to sell the film rights to producer John Coates. He lives in rural Sussex where the countryside is teeming with life but also deaths, such as road kill. If this is Briggs’ swansong it is a fitting tribute to his artistic talent and percipient story telling. Finally, I had always assumed Briggs was a gentle, kindly, innocent old gentleman - so I was unsettled to find him depicting himself ogling a bunch of teenage backpackers on a Duke of Edinburgh scheme trekking through his village, and making a lewd joke ('They're on the Duke of Edinburgh's? He has stated that he expects Time for Lights Out to be his last book – it took him over a decade to create.Briggs includes heartbreakingly beautiful photographs and a love letter she wrote to him from hospital. This is such a beautiful piece of work - I don't want to get too flowery about it but you really do sway with the isolation, the cynicism, and the touching and emotional sections of this book. Once my dad bought this car as a great treat, for the first time in his life, and she made him give it to me. Briggs is survived by his step-children and step-grandchildren, who said in a statement that he “will be deeply missed”.