One of the most beloved British authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Raymond Briggs was renowned for his beautiful and poignant graphic novels.
His most famous work is undoubtedly The Snowman, a wordless book turned film about a boy whose snowman comes to life. The film made by Channel 4, is a staple of Christmas TV scheduling in the UK. But the story, like so many of Briggs’ works, has a devastating ending.
He also created a brilliantly grumpy Father Christmas, while his sewer-dwelling monster Fungus The Bogeyman became a subversive children’s favourite. Another of his books that transcended his core readership was post-nuclear war drama When the Wind Blows, the film of which, like The Snowman, was directed by Jimmy Murakami.
Ethel and Ernest, published in 1998, tells the story of his parents’ marriage over 43 years, from their meeting in 1928 to their deaths in 1971.
The film version of that book, directed by Roger Mainwood (who sadly died of cancer in 2018) and voiced by Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent, was co-produced by Luxembourg’s Stephan Roelants and Melusine Productions.
“He was a very reserved person, and during these sessions I was quite upset because with the film he was reliving some very intimate moments
Roelants tells Delano he met Briggs physically twice, during the recordings and at the premiere of the film. “He was a very reserved person, and during these sessions I was quite upset because with the film he was reliving some very intimate moments. The voices of Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent were apparently very close to those of his parents. We were all overwhelmed by his emotion.”
An emotional Raymond Briggs was full of praise for the film at its world premier at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2016. Its premier in the grand duchy was at the Luxembourg City Film Festival in March 2017. And Roelants’ co-producer Camilla Deakin also acknowledged the Luxembourg contribution in the same Q&A session.
The film, which required some 70,000 hand-drawn frames, according to Deakin, was also a hit with critics and was nominated for best animated feature at the European Film Awards.
Leslie Felererin in The Hollywood Reporter said that Ethel and Ernest was “like that five minutes in Pixar’s Up that summarizes the entirety of Carl and Ellie’s marriage, but spun out over feature-length, but with hardly any loss of emotional heft.”
Briggs was hugely influential and, in the words of Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House children’s books (cited in The Guardian) “he leaves an extraordinary legacy, and a big hole.”