Walking in the air: Snowman creator Raymond Briggs’s favourite Sussex paths

An exhibition of the great British illustrator’s life opens this month in Ditchling village, in the South Downs countryside that inspired him

There aren’t many people who can claim to have seen a snowman fly over their house. It may sound fantastical, but every Christmas I settle down to watch The Snowman, Raymond Briggs’s best-loved work, and watch as the red-haired boy and the plump, tangerine-nosed snowman swoop over the downs that surround the village where I live before gliding above the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier and on out to sea.

The Snowman, like many of Briggs’s works, unfolds against a backdrop of the East Sussex landscapes he loved, and where he lived for more than 50 years. So it’s fitting that the first exhibition of his life and work since his death in 2022 is being held not in a London gallery but at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, just a couple of miles from his house in the village of Westmeston. Original drawings and illustrations, memorabilia, photographs and framed fan letters (including one from an American pastor enraged to discover that Father Christmas included images of Santa on the loo) give a unique insight into one of the greatest illustrators Britain has ever produced.