Illustrator Raymond Briggs

Raymond Briggs grew up in a terrace house just like mine just around the corner from me in London it turns out.

 

 The name didn't ring a bell for me until someone said he wrote and animated the famous book and film short, The Snowman (pictured above). Of course! 

It was about a boy who flies through the air with a snowman.

 When I googled him I realised I had read his books when I was young. The above book was one of my favourites. I loved comic books and was into Asterix, Tintin, Archie and Raymond Briggs.

 Ethel & Ernest is a lovely book that my neighbour has just lent me about Briggs's parents whom he grew up with at the end of our road in a house matching ours. It is a touching story about his parents, his mother a Lady's maid and his father a milkman, in comic book form spanning from the 1930's to the 1970's. It covers the war and the bombing in London (along with the child evactuations) to new inventions like gas cookers and television. It is a great and sad read (spoiler: they do die in the end having lived their whole married life in the one house).

Page 10 is when they first come to the house they buy. Lovely.