Ronald William Fordham Searle CBE,
RDI was a
British artist and
satirical cartoonist died he was 91.. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of
St Trinian's School and for his collaboration with
Geoffrey Willans on the
Molesworth series.
(3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011)
Biography
Searle was born in
Cambridge,
England,
where his father was a porter at Cambridge Railway Station. He started
drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of 15. He trained
at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology (now
Anglia Ruskin University) for two years.
In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the
Royal Engineers. In January 1942, he was stationed in
Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore
fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, first in
Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma
Death Railway. Searle contracted both
beri-beri and
malaria
during his incarceration, which included numerous beatings, and his
weight dropped to less than 40 kilograms. He was liberated in late 1945
with the final defeat of the Japanese. Immediately after the war, he
served as a courtroom artist at the
Nuremberg trials.
He married the journalist
Kaye Webb
in 1947; they had twins, Kate and Johnny. In 1961, he moved to Paris,
leaving his family and later marrying Monica Koenig, a painter, theatre
and jewellery designer.
[2] After 1975, Searle and his wife lived and worked in the mountains of
Haute Provence.
Searle died on 30 December 2011, aged 91.
Early work as war artist
Although Searle published the first
St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine
Lilliput
in 1941, his professional career really begins with his documentation
of the brutal camp conditions of his period as a prisoner-of-war of the
Japanese in
World War II in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of
cholera.
Searle recalled, "I desperately wanted to put down what was happening,
because I thought if by any chance there was a record, even if I died,
someone might find it and know what went on." But Searle survived, along
with approximately 300 of his drawings. Liberated late in 1945, Searle
returned to England where he published several of the drawings in fellow
prisoner
Russell Braddon's
The Naked Island.
Another of Searle's fellow prisoners later recounted, "If you can
imagine something that weighs six stone or so, is on the point of death
and has no qualities of the human condition that aren’t revolting,
calmly lying there with a pencil and a scrap of paper, drawing, you have
some idea of the difference of temperament that this man had from the
ordinary human being."
[3]
Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book,
Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945.
[4]
In the book, Searle also wrote of his experiences as a prisoner,
including the day he woke up to find a dead friend on either side of
him, and a live snake underneath his head:
- "You can’t have that sort of experience without it directing the
rest of your life. I think that’s why I never really left my prison
cell, because it gave me my measuring stick for the rest of my life...
Basically all the people we loved and knew and grew up with simply
became fertiliser for the nearest bamboo."
At least one of his drawings is on display at the Changi Museum and
Chapel, Singapore, but the majority of his originals are in the
permanent collection of the
Imperial War Museum, London, along with the works of other POW artists. The best known of these are
John Mennie,
Jack Bridger Chalker,
Philip Meninsky and
Ashley George Old.
Magazines, books, and films
Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for
Life,
Holiday and
Punch. His cartoons appeared in
The New Yorker, the
Sunday Express and the
News Chronicle.
He compiled more St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's
school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with
Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (
Down With Skool!, 1953, and
How to be Topp, 1954), and with
Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the
Sidney Gilliat and
Frank Launder film
The Happiest Days of Your Life.
[3]
After moving to Paris in 1961, he worked more on reportage for
Life and
Holiday
and less on cartoons. He also continued to work in a broad range of
media and created books (including his well-known cat books), animated
films and sculpture for commemorative medals, both for the French Mint
and the British Art Medal Society.
[5][6]
Searle did a considerable amount of designing for the cinema, and in
1965, he completed the opening, intermission and closing credits for the
comedy film
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines as well as the 1969 film
Monte Carlo or Bust. In 1975, the full-length cartoon
Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done was released. It is based on the character and songs from
H.M.S. Pinafore.
[7]
Animated by a number of artists both British and French, it is
considered by some to be his greatest achievement, although Searle
himself detested the result.
Archives
In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to
Wilhelm Busch Museum Hannover
(Germany), now renamed Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst.
The ancient Summer palace of George 1st, this Museum holds Searle's
archives.
Awards
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in America, including the
National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award in 1959 and 1965, the
Reuben Award in 1960, their Illustration Award in 1980 and their Advertising Award in 1986 and 1987. Searle was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004.
[3] In 2007, he was decorated with one of France's highest awards, the
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, and in 2009, he received the
German Order of Merit.
Influence
His work has had a great deal of influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including
Pat Oliphant,
[8] Matt Groening,
[9] Hilary Knight,
[10] and the animators of Disney's
101 Dalmatians.
[11]
He was an early influence on
John Lennon's drawing style which featured in the books
In His Own Write and
A Spaniard in the Works.
[12]
Bibliography
St Trinian's
- Hurrah For St Trinians, 1948
- The Female Approach: The Belles of St. Trinian's and Other Cartoons, 1950
- Back To The Slaughterhouse, and Other Ugly Moments, 1951
- The Terror of St Trinian's, or Angela's Prince Charming, 1952 (with Timothy Shy (D. B. Wyndham-Lewis))
- Souls in Torment, 1953 (preface by Cecil Day-Lewis)
- The St Trinian's Story, 1959 (with Kaye Webb)
- St Trinian's: The Cartoons, 2007
- St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business, 2008
Molesworth
- Down With Skool!: A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and Their Parents, 1953 (with Geoffrey Willans)
- How to be Topp: A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All There is to Kno About Space, 1954 (with Geoffrey Willans)
- Whizz for Atomms: A Guide to Survival in the 20th Century for
Fellow Pupils, their Doting Maters, Pompous Paters and Any Others who
are Interested, 1956 (with Geoffrey Willans) Published in the U.S. as Molesworth's Guide to the Atommic Age
- Back in the Jug Agane, 1959 (with Geoffrey Willans)
- The Compleet Molesworth, 1958 (collection) Molesworth (1999 Penguin reprint)
Other works
- Forty Drawings (1946)
- White Coolie, 1947 (with Ronald Hastain)
- This England 1946-1949, 1949 (edited by Audrey Hilton)
- The Stolen Journey, 1950 (with Oliver Philpot)
- An Irishman's Diary, 1950 (with Patrick Campbell)
- Dear Life, 1950 (with H. E. Bates)
- Paris Sketchbook, 1950 (with Kaye Webb) (repr. 1958)
- A Sleep of Prisoners, 1951 (with Christopher Fry)
- Life in Thin Slices, 1951 (with Patrick Campbell)
- The Naked Island, 1952 (with Russell Braddon)
- It Must be True, 1952 (with Denys Parsons)
- London—So Help Me!, 1952 (with Winifred Ellis)
- The Diverting History of John Gilpin, 1953 (text by William Cowper)
- Looking at London and People Worth Meeting, 1953 (with Kaye Webb)
- The Dark is Light Enough, 1954 (with Christopher Fry)
- Patrick Campbells Omnibus, 1954 (with Patrick Campbell)
- The Journal Of Edwin Carp, 1954 (edited by Richard Haydn)
- Modern Types, 1955 (with Geoffrey Gorer)
- The Rake's Progress, 1955
- Merry England, Etc, 1956
- Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, 1956 (with Angus Wilson)
- The Big City or the New Mayhew , 1958 (with Alex Atkinson)
- The Dog's Ear Book, 1958 (with Geoffrey Willans)
- USA for Beginners, 1959 (with Alex Atkinson)
- Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, 1959 (translation by Robert Graves)
- By Rocking Horse Across Russia, 1960 (with Alex Atkinson)
- Penguin Ronald Searle, 1960
- Refugees 1960: A Report in Words and Pictures, 1960 (with Kaye Webb)
- The Biting Eye of Andre Francois (1960)
- Which Way Did He Go?, 1961
- A Christmas Carol, 1961 (with Charles Dickens)
- The 13 Clocks and the Wonderful O, 1962 (with James Thurber)
- Searle In The Sixties, 1964
- From Frozen North to Filthy Lucre, 1964
- Haven't We Met Before Somewhere?, 1966
- Searle's Cats, 1967
- The Square Egg, 1968
- Take One Toad, 1968
- This Business of Bomfog, 1969 (with Madelaine Duke)
- Monte Carlo Or Bust, 1969 (with E. W. Hildick)
- Hello, where did all the people go?, 1969
- The Second Coming of Toulouse-Lautrec, 1969
- Secret Sketchbook, 1969
- The Great Fur Opera: Annals of the Hudson's Bay Company 1670-1970, 1970 (with Kildare Dobbs)[13]
- Scrooge, 1970 (with Elaine Donaldson)
- Mr. Lock of St. James's Street, 1971 (with Frank Whitbourn)
- The Addict, 1971
- More Cats, 1975
- Dick Dead Eye, 1975 (after Gilbert and Sullivan)
- Paris! Paris!, 1977 (with Irwin Shaw)
- Zodiac, 1977
- Ronald Searle, 1978
- The King of Beasts & Other Creatures, 1980
- The Situation is Hopeless, 1980
- Winning the Restaurant Game, 1980 (with Jay Jacobs)
- Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer With Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle, 1981
- Ronald Searle's Big Fat Cat Book, 1982
- The Illustrated Winespeak, 1983
- Ronald Searle in Perspective, 1983
- Ronald Searle's Golden Oldies 1941 - 1961, 1985
- Something in the Cellar, 1986
- To the Kwai and Back: War Drawings 1939-1945 (1986)
- Ronald Searle's Non-Sexist Dictionary, 1988
- Ah Yes, I Remember It Well...: Paris 1961-1975, 1988
- Slightly Foxed But Still Desirable: Ronald Searle's Wicked World of Book Collecting, 1989
- Marquis De Sade Meets Goody Two-Shoes, 1994
- The Tales of Grandpa Cat, 1994 (with Lee Wardlaw)
- The Hatless Man, 1995 (with Sarah Kortum)
- A French Affair : The Paris Beat, 1965-1998, 1999 (with Mary Blume)
- Wicked Etiquette, 2000 (with Sarah Kortum)
- Ronald Searle in Le Monde, 2001
- Railway of Hell: A Japanese POW's Account of War, Capture and Forced Labour, 2002 (with Reginald Burton)
- Searle's Cats, 2005 (New and Expanded Edition, all illustrations are new)
- The Scrapbook Drawings", 2005
- Cat O' Nine Tales: And Other Stories, 2006 (with Jeffrey Archer)
- Beastly Feasts: A Mischievous Menagerie in Rhyme, 2007 (with Robert Forbes)
- More Scraps & Watteau Revisited, 2008
- Let's Have a Bite!: A Banquet of Beastly Rhymes, 2010 (with Robert Forbes)
- What! Already?: Searle at 90, 2010
- Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole, 2011
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