Raymond Briggs, writer

I’ve always enjoyed taking something that’s fantasy – like a bogeyman or Father Christmas – and imagining it as wholly real. Take Father Christmas. What do we know about him? Well, he’s got a white beard, so he must be quite old. He’s rather fat, so he probably likes his food. He’s got a red face and a red nose, so he probably likes his drink. And he’s been doing this dreadful job for donkey’s years: going out all night long, in all weathers. He’s sick to the back teeth of it: who wouldn’t be? So it follows, naturally, that he’s going to be grumpy.

My Father Christmas book was first published in 1973, though I started work on it about 18 months before. Nobody ever believes that’s how long it takes me to write and illustrate a book, but it is. It was a dreadful time in my life, beyond belief. My parents died in 1971, and my wife in 1973. So, looking back, I suppose I was ploughing all my energies into the book.

I set it in my parents’ house in Wimbledon Park, London, and I’d have Father Christmas washing at the sink, like my father used to do. My dad appears in the book, too. In one scene, he meets Father Christmas and says: “Still at it, mate?” I suppose I saw parallels between Father Christmas’s job and my father’s job as a milkman. It was nothing like as bad as delivering parcels all over the world, but my dad did have to get up at godforsaken hours – five or six in the morning – and go out in all weathers. On Christmas morning, I’d get up very early to help him. In that way, I suppose, my early experience of Christmas was not unlike Father Christmas’s.

I never think about my audience. Some people write for particular children, but I haven’t got any kids, so I couldn’t begin to think in that way. I just take something I want to explore – like Father Christmas, where he lives, what it’s like to be him – and try to get it out of my head and on to the paper so that I’m satisfied with it. But of course I hope that other people will be, too. People don’t always realise that creating a picture book is as much about design as illustration. It doesn’t all just slot together: you’ve got to set the number of pages – 32 in most picture books – then do a storyboard, making sure it ends on the right page. It’s rather mathematical, really.

The year my wife died, various kind friends asked me away to help me get over the business. One friend had a house in France, another asked me up to Scotland. Those trips became the basis for the second Father Christmas book, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday. I’d gone away, so I thought he could too. There are always elements of yourself in any character.

I haven’t seen the film of Father Christmas for years, but I remember it being jolly good. They drew on both books. I just tried to keep out of their way: film-makers don’t want the person who wrote a book breathing down their neck, saying: “You’ve got that wrong, he doesn’t do that in that scene.”

Years ago, I had an amazing letter from a kid about the book, pointing out that when Father Christmas prepares his sandwiches, he cuts them in half at right angles, but when we see him eating them later, up on the snowy roof, they’re cut diagonally. Fancy a kid noticing that! I sent him a letter back, saying: “That’s absolutely brilliant.”

My book The Snowman is probably better known than Father Christmas now, but I think both are good. People often come up to me, in shops or in the street, to say: “Oh, Mr Briggs, I just have to say how much we love your books! Our children had them, and now our grandchildren are reading them.” It’s staggering. It almost brings me to tears. To know your books have been loved across two generations is the biggest compliment an author can have.