Unpublished works by Ditchling-based author of Christmas book The Snowman made available
An archive of the work by Raymond Briggs, the Ditchling-based creator of The Snowman, will be made available for the first time this month.
It can be searched online by members of the public who can then request items for viewing at The Keep via its website.
Raymond Redvers Briggs was born in Wimbledon Park in London on January 18, 1934. His father, Ernest worked as a milkman while his mother, Ethel had been a lady's maid before her marriage. In 1949 he went to the Wimbledon School of Art aiming to work as a cartoonist, despite the opposition of his father. He was conscripted into the Royal Corps of Signals for his National Service.
Briggs, who died in 2022, lived and worked in Ditchling for more than 60 years. Archivist Chris Oliver, who has spent nine months cataloguing his personal papers, work and records said: "It felt a bit like going into Tutankhamun's tomb." The collection has been entrusted to the East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office at its headquarters, The Keep just off the A27 as it heads into Brighton from Lewes.
Chris Oliver said it felt amazing seeing Briggs' remarkable artwork and having the chance to take a behind-the-scenes look at iconic things. He said: "To have this access in a local archive and in a place which was so important to him, I think that is incredible."
His personal photographs, unpublished works and other sketches charting the development of his style are all part of the collection. It also features fan mail after the publication of some of his most famous works including Fungus the Bogeyman, a picture book published in 1977.
Briggs was evacuated to Dorset during WWII and letters he wrote home to his parents are also in the collection. It is said he used his illustrative skills to articulate his own views on people, politics and society. And his work sometimes reflected social and political themes of the '70s and '870s. When the Wind Blows, released in 1982, is described as a devastating and poignant graphic novel about an elderly British couple trying to survive a nuclear attack, using government pamphlets. And Briggs' Ethel and Ernest is a moving, hand-drawn, biographical novel chronicling the lives of his milkman father and maid mother through changing times. This was published in 1998.
"Everything takes so bloody long when you're old" he complained at the age of 85, three years before his death.
Although he was often quoted as 'hating Christmas,' people who knew him said that was not true. Away from public view in his Ditchling home, he was a generous and spirited figure. He was awarded a CBE in the Queen's 2017 Birthday Honours. .