This is such a beautiful piece of work - I don't want to get too flowery about it but you really do sway with the isolation, the cynicism, and the touching and emotional sections of this book. I always loved Briggs's books as a boy, especially classics like Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas. With surprising page-turns, felicitous pauses, and pitch-perfect dialogue, Briggs renders the drama and humour of child–adult and child–bear relations, while questioning the nature of imagination and reality. He’s left politics behind now: “I thought a United States of Europe was rather a nice idea, but I don’t think about all that now.

Time For Lights Out by Raymond Briggs | Goodreads Time For Lights Out by Raymond Briggs | Goodreads

I would have loved for more of the art to have his trademark style, but many of the drawings are understandably sketchy and loosely 'finished'. Raymond Briggs was born in London in 1934, and studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Slade School of Art, London. Featuring a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, who had first appeared in a previous work, Gentleman Jim, it describes a Soviet nuclear attack on Great Britain and the aftermath. Illustrated with Briggs's inimitable pencil drawings, Time for Lights Out is a collection of short pieces, some funny, some melancholy, some remembering his wife who died young, others about the joy of grandchildren, of walking the dog. But instead he said he would publish it, which shows what the standard was like if a complete novice who had never written anything more than a school essay could get his first effort published.

The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (1984) was a scathing denunciation of the Falklands War. Channel 4 didn’t duck the issue with its 1982 animated version, but sugared the pill by adding a visit to Father Christmas and a soundtrack with a piping choirboy.

Raymond Briggs dies aged 88 - The Guardian Snowman author Raymond Briggs dies aged 88 - The Guardian

He reads newspaper obituary pages and feels a sense of achievement when he is older than the recently deceased. Time For Lights Out, Raymond Briggs’ exploration and contemplation of old age and death, is published by Jonathan Cape today.Illustrated with Briggs’s inimitable pencil drawings, Time for Lights Out is a collection of short pieces, some funny, some melancholy, some remembering his wife who died young, others about the joy of grandchildren, of walking the dog. A poignant read, given new significance after the recent death of the author who brought us classics like The Snowman, Father Christmas and When The Wind Blows.