Raymond Briggs is the latest in a long line of writers revealed to have had little interest in children
aged 88, could be heard on the radio, saying for all to hear: “I’ve no interest in children. Didn’t want to have any.”, and daughter, partner and mother of writers, I can tell you: no writers like children – if said children are wanting things from the writer when the writer wants to be writing. This isn’t exclusive to any particular kind of writer, nor even to creative people. It’s true of everyone, as we know now after lockdowns requiring people to simultaneously work and school at home.
But I don’t believe in this so-called dislike. First, of all the possible reasons for liking or disliking an individual, was there ever a dafter one than their age? And second, having no interest in childrenwith Sarah Hughes, Briggs points to a photo of his late wife’s offspring. “This one used to want to sit on my head,” he told her. “‘I want to sit on his head,’ he’d say and climb up. It was lovely.” Then, she wrote, “he stared into space for a moment”.
When Briggs was suggested as Children’s Laureate, the answer was “no, thank you ... all that running all over the country, all the bookings and bed and breakfasts and railways. I don’t want to go to schools and give talks on children’s books. I don’t actually know anything much about children. I try to avoid them whenever possible.”
I suspect that individual or known children can be OK, but a mass of tiny maniacs and fuss is alarming to people who work in quiet. So is it really children that these writers aren’t keen on? Perhapsjust disliked that the success of his children’s books outshone the reputation he really desired, as a playwright.
On the day of Sendak’s barmitzvah in 1942 in New York, his father learned of the destruction of the family in Europe. This was only part of the trauma that made his parents, in Maurice’s word, “crazy”. His dark topics were sometimes taken as an aggression to a young readership, an indication that he didn’t care for them. He said himself that if he’d come from a happy home he wouldn’t have become an artist.
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