\n
With more ideas than he could fit in a traditional picture book, Mr. Briggs, who had added writing to his repertoire for artistic and financial reasons, debuted his comic-strip approach in \u201cFather Christmas,\u201d which also won a Kate Greenaway Medal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve been stuck with that method ever since, which is very laborious,\u201d he said on the BBC’s \u201cDesert Island Discs\u201d in 1983.<\/p>\n
After the death of his wife, Mr. Briggs spent four decades in a relationship with Liz Benjamin, who died in 2015 of Parkinson’s disease. \u201cThe Puddleman\u201d (2004) is dedicated to Ms. Benjamin’s three grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Mr. Briggs taught illustration part-time at the Brighton School of Art from 1961 to 1986. He did not like to leave England and lived in a slightly eccentric house in East Sussex, where he collected jigsaw puzzles of the Queen Mother. The living room ceiling was papered with maps. Cupboard doors featured portraits of his parents.<\/p>\n
He repeatedly conjured them \u2014 his mother’s wide face, his father’s blue-collar job, their longtime home \u2014 in his books. In \u201cFather Christmas,\u201d the only person the title character interacts with is a milkman who is also making his rounds before 6 am<\/p>\n
A book about his parents’ lengthy relationship and their traumatic deaths, \u201cEthel and Ernest,\u201d was named the illustrated book of the year in 1999 by the British Book Awards, which had declared Mr. Briggs its children’s author of the year earlier that decade.<\/p>\n
For his final published work, \u201cTime for Lights Out\u201d (2019), Mr. Briggs mixed quotes, sketches and verse in the exploration of a theme that had enthralled him through life: the inevitability of death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n