Originally published by L.S. Media. January 5th 2012.
Probably best known as the creator of the St. Trinian’s School drawings, the artist Ronald Searle passed away on December 30thaged 91.
Born in Cambridge in 1920, Mr. Searle, like many of his generation, found his studies suspended at the outbreak of war and found himself stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting against the Japanese in Malaya, Singapore fell and Ronald Searle was captured and held as a prisoner of war.
Despite well documented and horrific conditions, Ronald Searle, who was already an accomplished artist, became a war artist, capturing the brutality of the times. Such a brave move would have been punishable had the drawings been found, however Mr. Searle hid all them under the mattresses of those dying of cholera.
Mr. Searle commented on this period in his life later, “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.”
The drawings later appear in his 1986 book Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945 and would become a testament and damning indictment to the cruelty of war and man’s inhumanity to man. In the book Searle also told of his life during the time as a prisoner of war, including the moment where he woke in the morning to find the two men either side of him had died during the night, and a live snake underneath his head. Few of us could comprehend the emotion.
After liberation, Ronald Searle returned to England and in the 1950’s produced an astounding amount of work with the girls of St. Trinian’s becoming much loved and sought after as collections. These innocent, wildly witty and surreal depictions of boarding school life in Middle England are far removed from the film adaptations that have become sensationalised and highly sexualised to the point that the two are so far removed from each other as to be completely separate creations. Only the talent of the original artist joins the void between them.
Other work Ronald Searle was lauded for included the Molesworth books which he collaborated with Geoffrey Willans, the 1975 animated film Dick Deadeye and the whimsical opening and closing credits for film Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines.
Ronald Searle was finally recognised for his services in 2004 with the appointment of Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Ronald Searle CBE, RDI (March 3rd 1920 – 30th December 2011)
Ian D. Hall