Talk:Raymond Briggs

Father Christmas
This book is very "British", full of details from the way life was lived in about 1940. What is UXO - tea? What is CAFFO? 69.87.204.125 22:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * UXO might be a reference to Oxo stock cubes, see Oxo (food). Maikel (talk) 08:36, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Biography?
What is known about his life, beyond the hints in Ethel and Ernest? Was he married? Did he have children?-69.87.194.2 23:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Seconded. Where could we get this information? Maikel (talk) 08:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Ethel and Ernest COULD give a lot of good info but using a comic I'm quite sure is against Wikipedia's rules so hopefully he does an interview or SOMEthing. Maybe he just wants his privacy I don't know. B-Movie Fan (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Biography details
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/10/booksforchildrenandteenagers
 * Big kid, 'old git' and still in the rudest of health
 * Rachel Cooke
 * The Observer, Sunday 10 August 2008

Raymond Briggs lives in deepest Sussex, in a small, white house that has more draughts and rickety bookcases than your local underfunded library.

Gentleman Jim tells the story of Jim Bloggs, who works as a council toilet attendant and dreams of a better life. Thwarted by a lack of qualifications, and by every authority figure he meets, Jim finally becomes a highwayman, with disastrous consequences... The inspiration for it came from the son of his partner, Liz.

Of all his books, it is Ethel & Ernest that Briggs keeps by his bedside in his crowded house (over the years he has accrued so many bits of whimsy - the model of a half-eaten sandwich that I am staring at now; the presentation box of Marks & Spencer's Fungus the Bogeyman handkerchiefs over there - that he and Liz have always had to keep separate homes, space being at something of a premium). It, too, is a bleak book, telling the story of the lives and deaths of his milkman father and his lady's maid mother, and touching on his marriage to Jean, who suffered from schizophrenia (she could not have coped with children so she and Raymond did not have any; Jean died from leukaemia in 1973, only two years after his parents).

Meanwhile, he continues to work: 'On a book about old age and death, which is what you tend to think about when you get to 70. I've finished the writing. Now I've just got about five years of illustrating to do. The donkey work!'

Liz's grandchildren roll their eyes at his antics.

-69.87.203.150 (talk) 23:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Birthdate anomaly
Raymond's date of birth is reported as January 18th 1934 and yet the official record was not until Q4 1934 http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=YVabgb2lOhcv2FAbYGUODg&scan=1 without any note about late entry. Could he be younger than he thinks? TheMathemagician (talk) 11:52, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Penguin book linkspam
Whatever "information not available in the article (yet) or elsewhere" should simply be added to the article, if it is worth noting. We don't add links to "official publishers" per WP:ELNO #1, #4, #5, #13, #14. --Ronz (talk) 17:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll add the information and use the link as a reference eventually. (refactored --Ronz (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2009 (UTC)) Please use common sense in tandem with the guidelines. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I found some more suitable references for the information, now that I know what information was under consideration. --Ronz (talk) 22:18, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

British Book Award
We don't need full names of awards in the infobox, and they interfere if they are long; so I have shortened Horn Book Award and British Book Award. Nor do we need footnotes from the infobox for matters covered in the article; so I have deleted the superscript.

British Book Award facts are confused regarding the first of his two wins. At the moment we say here:
 * in the infobox, 1993 and 1999 — my choice to rely on our award article
 * in the text Biography, 1993 Children's Author of the Year, no particular book, no reference
 * in section Awards and honors, 1992 Children's Author of the Year, no particular book, reference Briggs at BCL

Briggs at BCL actually says "1992 British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, The Man"

Our award article/list British Book Award gives the official website only for general information. The website currently lists winners for extant awards only, I think, so those won by Briggs are not listed.

--P64 (talk) 00:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Picture?
It would be nice to have a picture of him or something. B-Movie Fan (talk) 15:34, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Death date?
None of the sources I've yet found gives date of death, only of announcement, today - so it may well have been yesterday, or even earlier. We have an RS (and there are more already online) for the fact that his death was announced today, that's all. Pam D  07:33, 10 August 2022 (UTC)


 * @PamD The only date of death that I found is from The Guardian. See . The Guardian is saying that he died on Tuesday morning, but as of writing this, no other source that I have found has a date of death. However, I’ll keep looking around. Fats40boy11 (talk) 07:49, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * No need, that's fine by me as a RS for 9th! Pam  D  07:56, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Colons
To, I'm fascinated that you think a colon before a quote is "American". Please share sources. I'd love to read them. Thanks, Overtone11 (talk) 21:07, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Read Fowler and a few others. 2A00:23C7:2B86:9801:B0CD:21CA:3A24:1F97 (talk) 22:00, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * There's nothing in Fowler's as far as I can see. And I've checked two editions. Have you got detailed references please? And what are the "few others"? Thanks Overtone11 (talk) 23:49, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * See Fowler (current edition), p. 139, for an example of how Amerenglish and the Queen's English differ, the former favouring a colon and the latter a comma. David Crystal's Making a Point (2015) is interesting on the differences between BrE and AmE usage in punctuation in general and colons in particular. Random examples from my bookshelves: in The Big Sleep Chandler writes The butler stood in front of him and said: "This is Mr. Marlowe, General." whereas in Right Ho, Jeeves, Wodehouse writes …and he said, "Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight..." Not a statistically valid sample, but indicative, I think. Certainly, an American Wikipedian with whom I have frequently collaborated will by default write He said: "This is so-and-so", whereas I, an Englishman, will write He said, "This is so-and so". I hope this helps.  Tim riley  talk   11:49, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Tim. I appreciate your contribution. I think I'll take a trip to Waterstones Piccadilly this evening. Overtone11 (talk) 14:36, 17 August 2022 (UTC)