Ronald Searle

Ronald William Fordham Searle (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011

Biography

Searle was born in Cambridge, England, where his father was a Post Office worker who repaired telephone lines.

In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. In January 1942, he was in the 287th Field Company, RE in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle, when Singapore fell to the Japanese. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. Searle contracted both beriberi and malaria during his incarceration, which included numerous beatings, and his weight dropped to less than 40 kilograms (approximately 6 stone 4 pounds). He was liberated in late 1945 with the final defeat of the Japanese. After the war, he served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg trials and later the Adolf Eichmann trial (1961). Later he married Monica Koenig, a painter, theatre and jewellery designer. After 1975, Searle and his wife lived and worked in the mountains of Haute Provence, in the town of Tourtour in a house marked with a plaque in his honor.

Searle's wife Monica died in July 2011 and he himself died on 30 December 2011, aged 91.

Early work as war artist during captivity alt=In the Jungle - Working on a Cutting. Rock Clearing after Blasting Art, 1943 by Ronald Searle In the Jungle - Working on a Cutting. Rock Clearing after Blasting, 1943 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."

Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book, Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939–1945. 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:

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. In 2002, additional war drawings by Searle were discovered in Melbourne, Australia. They depict the Australian soldier Henry "Lofty" Cannon, whom Searle credits with saving his life while they were prisoners of war. These drawings are now held by the State Library of Victoria.

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. 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 and other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Medallist Medal by Searle titled Searle at 70. Struck by Thomas Fattorini Ltd Searle designed the 1992 delegates medal for the FIDEM XXIII Congress London. It depicted a half-length bust of the renaissance medallist Pisanello and was struck by the Royal Mint. Other notable medals were "Searle at Seventy" (1990) and "Kwai 50th Anniversary" (1991), both struck by Thomas Fattorini Ltd, and "Charles Dickens" (1983) struck by the Birmingham Mint.

Archives In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to Wilhelm Busch Museum, Hanover (Germany), now renamed . Previously the summer palace of George I of Hanover, this museum also 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. , Ralph Steadman. Chris Riddell and Martin Rowson. Critics and commentators have noted stylistic similarities between Searle, Scarfe, and Steadman, particularly in their use of scratchy linework and ink-splatter techniques.

Across the Atlantic, Searle was a friend of the satirical humorist S. J. Perelman. His work has had an influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including Edward Gorey, Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight, and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians.

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. Anglia Ruskin University has named the Ronald Searle Award for Creativity in the Arts in his honour. 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 What Am I Still Doing Here?, 2011 (with Roger Lewis)