In 1966 he won the Kate Greenaway medal for his illustration work on a book of nursery rhymes, The Mother Goose Treasury.

In February 2017, Briggs was honoured with the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award and the trust responded to news of his death by tweeting: “He will live on in his stunning, iconic books.” His parents died in 1971 and his wife soon after in 1973, from leukaemia. This led Briggs to throw himself single-mindedly into his work. Father Christmas (1973) was the result. Devised in comic book fashion, Briggs took an iconic, mythical figure and depicted him as an ordinary worker doing an often tedious and repetitive job. Find sources: "The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( May 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Francesca Dow, managing director of children’s at Penguin Random House said: “I am very proud that Puffin has been the home of Raymond’s children’s books for so many years. At the victory celebrations staged by the Old Iron Woman, “the soldiers with bits of their bodies missing were not invited to take part… in case the sight of them spoiled the rejoicing.”

His first work was in advertising, but he soon began to win acclaim as a children's book illustrator as well as teaching illustration at Brighton College of Art. He came to public attention when he illustrated a book of nursery rhymes, The Mother Goose Treasury, in 1966, winning a Kate Greenaway medal. Since then he has become one of the most innovative and popular author-illustrators. Many typical traits of Briggs’ later work were present, above all a genuinely felt sympathy for working people (Briggs’ father appears once in the story as his milk round and Father Christmas’ delivery route cross paths in the early morning). He has a feel for working class life, with its difficulties and sometimes comic predicaments. Briggs drew the ire of conservatives for breaking social taboos, such as depicting Father Christmas on the lavatory and constantly grumbling about “Bloomin Christmas!” Because of the way Briggs draws Thatcher as kind of like Parker and Stone depict Barbara Streisand in South Park (Mecha Streisand!), robotic with cannons for breasts that open up and spew forth tax money, I wouldn’t say this is at all a book suitable for kids. And if not for that, then the muted, devastating way he shows the casualties of war ought to be carefully presented to youngsters as the drawings are quite blunt.Reality there is however in the form of both sides casualities, drowned, burnt to death, shot and cripples portrayed realistically in contrast to the principal characters. Those with a long memory may remember Mrs T was first told of the invasion while attendind an environmental conference in Scotland. Her reaction was that alluded to in the book: "How exciting to have a REAL crisis to deal with....." ln the post victory celebration service, wounded and maimed British troops were kept away as their appear ance would have spoilt the mood of rejoicing. As part of his national military service, he worked in the Royal Corps of Signals, where he was mostly required to draw electrical and radio circuits. By the time he had completed his higher education at the Slade School of Fine Art, he was already receiving commissions from publishers and advertising agencies. Born in Wimbledon in 1934, Briggs studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art before briefly pursuing painting.

Ms Dow said Briggs had been “unique” and had “inspired generations of creators of picture books, graphic novels, and animations." At the age of 6, during World War II, Briggs was twice evacuated as one of the millions of children, who along with expectant mothers and the infirm, were sent away from heavily populated areas of England to escape the Nazi air raids. Briggs said he enjoyed what he later described as a happy but uneventful childhood. Despite outward appearances, however, anxieties over the ever-present threat of death and destruction cannot have failed to leave a mark on the impressionable boy (already 10 years’ old when the war ended) and undoubtedly accounts for these themes looming so large in his later work.The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (ISBN 0241113628) is a 1984 picture book, ostensibly for very young children, written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs and published by Hamish Hamilton. It satirises the Falklands War of 1982.