His illustrated books have brought joy to millions of children (and a fair few adults) but Raymond Briggs, the creator of The Snowman, has admitted that success is no protection against a melancholy old age.
In an interview for The Sunday Times Magazine column A Life in the Day, Briggs, 82, describes a twilight existence in which the day starts with medication and ends with bedtime shortly after 8pm.
Briggs, who at times has appeared to enjoy playing up his curmudgeonly side, said: “Don’t get old, dear, that’s the thing.”
A little more than a year after the death of Liz, his partner of 42 years whom he nursed through her illness, Briggs is struggling to deal with the way her final years were affected by Parkinson’s and dementia.
“I haven’t come to terms with that yet,” he said.
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The couple never lived together because her cottage was crowded with her two children and at least two lodgers, but since her death he finds himself living in her old home and appears disorientated by the experience.
“This isn’t my house. It’s Liz’s house. It isn’t a great house for work. It’s dark, even with electric lights on,” he said. By contrast, he added, his own home is nearby and has “marvellous views for miles”.
His rather bleak routine starts with a pill before breakfast. “I’ve forgotten what it’s for — blood pressure, probably.” He then does the rounds of frail neighbours near his home in Plumpton, East Sussex, including a 91-year- old named Ron.
Ron appears a sardonic sort, unlikely to lift his mood. Briggs recounts how his first wife, the painter Jean Taprell Clark, who died in 1973, also had serious health problems, suffering from schizophrenia and leukaemia.
Ron remarks “You don’t have much luck with women, do you Raymond?” To which Briggs says: “On we go.”
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Lunchtime is taken standing up “because the moment you sit down, you realise you need something else”.
After a lie-down he takes a walk at 3pm to see Liz’s grave.
Domestic chores fill up much of the rest of the day, with trips to charity shops in nearby Lewes: “I got a shirt the other day. Two quid! You can buy shirts for £80 but I wouldn’t dream of paying that.”
He may appear unffected by the commercial successes of such hits as When the Wind Blows, Father Christmas and Fungus the Bogeyman, but as he works on his illustrations he does admit to a sense of satisfaction at proving his detractors wrong.
“When I was 16, the head of the school almost exploded when I said I wanted to become a cartoonist.
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“He went bright red in the face and said: ‘Good God, boy, as that all you want to do?’ There was always a snobbery between fine art and commercial art.”
Even his parents, Ethel, a domestic servant, and Ernest, a milkman, were “worried stiff” that their grammar school son was throwing away his prospects: “I had a passport to the middle classes and a nice office job.”
They need not have been so anxious. An animated version of Ethel & Ernest, his moving portrait of the couple’s marriage — “full of soot, grit, stoicism and endless cups of tea” — will be one of the highlights of the BBC’s Christmas viewing.