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Radio Times Celebrates 40th Anniversary of a Comic, Puts The Snowman on Their Christmas Cover
One of Britain's best-selling and longest-running magazines, the Radio Times, offering a listings guide to television and radio, is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Raymond Briggs comic book The Snowman, turned into TV animations, stage shows and a line of festive merchandise.
They're also giving away a free copy of the comic, in paperback, if you cut out a token and take it into your local Rymans store – or pop it in the post to them.
I just picked up both.
This is the first time an actual comic book has made it onto the front page of the Radio Times – as opposed to simply an adaptation of one. Not even the Beano has managed that…
The Snowman by Raymond Briggs was first published in 1978 by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom, and by Random House in the United States in November of the same year. It was the runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, and was added to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1979.
The book was adapted into a half-hour animated television special by Dianne Jackson in 1982 for Channel 4 for Christmas and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and won a BAFTA. The animated special became prominent in British popular culture and its showings have since become an annual festive event. The comic book has continued to sell.
The animation is told through pictures, action and music, scored by Howard Blake, was wordless, just like the book, except for the song "Walking in the Air". In addition to the orchestral score, performed in the film by the Sinfonia of London, Blake composed the music and lyrics of the song, performed by Peter Auty, a St Paul's Cathedral choirboy. The hit single release three years later, as the TV showing was becoming an institition, was sung by Aled Jones.