Ronald William
Fordham Searle was born in 1920 in Cambridge, where his father worked as a telephone engineer.
At the age of 15 he studied at the local College of Arts and Technology and in 1938
he was awarded a scholarship to study full-time at Cambridge School of Art. But a year later,
just before war with Germany was declared he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the army.
Nevertheless he remained in Britain for a while and his first nationally
published cartoon appeared in Lilliput magazine in 1941.
But he was then sent to Malaya, to fight the Japanese.
In 1942 he was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war in captivity in Changi
Prison and the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway.
But despite the unimaginable brutality and deprivation he and his fellow captives
endured he recorded the scenes around him on whatever scraps of paper could be found,
and when liberated in 1945 he returned to Britain and published some of this harrowing work.
In addition to commissions from other British magazines such as the Radio
Times his humorous drawings featured regularly in Lilliput, and he was also
a popular choice to provide illustrations for short stories published in the postwar years.
It was at Lilliput's offices in 1947 that he met and later married the journalist Kaye Webb.
And it was in their pages that he developed the ongoing saga of the girl's school St Trinian's.
Such was the success of these cartoons that even by 1948 they
were also being published in book form, and selling in large numbers.
Between 1949 and 1951 he also illustrated several other humorous books in collaboration
with various authors, all of which benefitted considerably from his visual contributions.
Despite being kept busy enough with these books in 1950 he collaborated
with Kaye Webb on the Paris Sketchbook. This collection of line drawings wasn't
intended to be humorous, but was an atmospheric observational piece
of illustration and prose celebrating the French capital and its inhabitants.
And at this time his work began to appear in the pages of the
humour magazine Punch. where his regular feature about West End
plays and shows known as the Theatre sketchbook ran for over a decade.
In 1952 Searle decided that his life had been dominated by St. Trinian's for too long and he
stopped drawing them, killing the girls off in an atomic explosion the following year.
But despite his desire to be rid of his creations,
they continued to be extremely popular for decades to come.
During his career he didn't have a great deal of involvement with advertising but
in 1953 he did start working on a long running campaign for Lemon Hart rum.
And although this campaign was very successful it appears to
have been his only such venture at this time.
In 1953 his collaboration with writer Geoffrey Willans titled Down With Skool! was published.
This comedic account of public school life, supposedly written by the schoolboy Molesworth,
became immensely popular and led to 3 more published up to 1959.
And such is their enduring popularity they are all still available to buy more than 60 years later
Also in that year another collaboration with Kaye Webb, titled Looking at London was published.
This record of the British capital in the 1950s was another intimate observational
marriage of words and pictures and Searle's images now stand as a valid
and particularly evocative historical record of the people and the places.
In 1954 the first St. Trinian's feature film was released and although Searle's design for
the poster wasn't used his drawings did feature in the title sequence.
Both The Journal of Edwin Carp, published in 1954 , and Modern Types published just a
year later were more demonstrations of Searle's ability to satirise recognisable
strands of British contemporary society with considerable accuracy.
1955's series The Rake's Progress was an interesting departure into narrative comic
strip work. It comprised of various contemporary re- readings of the rise
and ultimate fall of the Rake, as originally created by William Hogarth in the 18th century.
In the mid 1950s Searle created a series of cover illustrations for
the children's magazine the Young Elizabethan, featuring his schoolboy character Molesworth.
Not long after his work also began to appear regularly in American magazines,
There were commissions from Life and most frequently he featured in the
pages of the business magazine Fortune, with a series of large
absorbing colour compositions which gave him a significant foothold in the USA.
In 1957 the film Blue Murder at St. Trinian's was released, and this time around Searle's
illustrated poster was used to promote it. In 1959 he illustrated the book USA for beginners,
a Brit's eye view of the unfathomable ways of our transatlantic cousins.
This book was published on both sides of the Atlantic and subtly mocked British snobbery
as much as it did the American way of life. Searle's association with Punch continued
undiminished and by the early 1960s he was also producing a long running series of full
colour covers, all of which bore testament to his sense of humour and graphic talent.
In 1961 he and Kaye Webb separated and Searle relocated to Paris.
and In that year his colour visualisation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
was published. this volume was a patticularly striking and expressive work which successfully
blended the humour and pathos of the story. In the same year in a more journalistic
capacity Searle made a visual record of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann.
A year later his illustrations for two comedic fantasies written by American humorist James
Thurber were published. Both the 13 Clocks and the Wonderful O were witty parodies of fairy tales,
and although the collaboration was never repeated the results were an undoubted creative success.
And In 1965 he returned to film work and designed the animated titles and credits
for the internationally popular comedy film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.
in 1967 he married Monica Koenig, a painter, and designer.And
he also published Searle's Book of Cats, a series of comical felines and their behaviour,
a theme he would return to several times in later years.
the film Monte Carlo or Bust! which also featured illustrations by Searle, was premiered in 1969 and
was retitled for American screenings as Those daring young men in their jaunty jalopies.
in that year Searle's book on the life of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec was published,
and although it was far from his best selling work it was a particularly
expressive collection of sardonic yet sympathetic humorous drawings.
he was immensely prolific at this time and also in 1969
he published a triumphant edition of the story of Baron Munchausen.
Searle's spidery energetic line work and absurdist streak were utilised in this
project to create memorable comic visualisations of the Baron's impossibly tall tales of adventure.
In 1970 he returned to Dickens' Christmas Carol,
this time with illustrations for a musical production of the story rebranded under the
title Scrooge. And he also created a wonderfully humorous series of Posters to encourage Parisian
dog owners to refrain from allowing their pets to foul the pavements of the city.
As the 70s unfolded Searle increased his profile in the USA with quite a few covers
for the New Yorker magazine, and this series of imaginative and absurdist visual delights
demonstrated that his humour was able to successfully transcend national borders.
In 1975, the animated film Dick Deadeye was released. It was based on Gilbert and Sullivan's
comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore, and Searle's involvement was particularly significant.
He produced a large volume of character designs and background art which dictated
the visual character of the film. and also in 1975 he followed up his
earlier success with the subject of cats and published the appropriately titled More Cats,
in which he really warmed to his theme and created more narrative scenarios than his first effort.
After 1975, Searle and his wife lived and worked in the mountains of Haute Provence
in Southern France. and he created the comical astrological book Zoodiac in 1977.
In 1980 he followed this with the equally well observed and expressively rendered The King of
Beasts & Other Creatures. And using what had by now become his defining gestural combination of
pen ink and watercolour he successfully imbued his creations with human characteristics.
In 1986 two books were published featuring yet more examples of Searle's relentess creativity.
Somrhting in the cellar featured colour images about the consumption
and reitualisation of wine, and Too Many Songs by Tom lehrer contained
a series of equally surreal but appealing monochromes.
Moving effortlessly into more contemporary issues he published his Non-Sexist Dictionary in 1988.
And throughout the 90s and into the 21st century he published quite a few more books, such as 1994s
Marquis De Sade Meets Goody Two-Shoes, which played with the idea of unlikely partnerships.
Searle appears to have finally started taking things somewhat
easier around the beginning of the new millennium but Although now 77 years old, in 2007 he created
one of his finest projects, the satirical book Beastly Feasts: A Mischievous Menagerie in Rhyme.
This was another series of immensely absorbing and amusing colour illustrations featuring
hybrids of animals and human stereotypes to accompany comic verses by Robert Forbes.
Searle's last book was What Am I Still Doing Here,
a collaboration with author Roger Lewis published in 2011.
In that year Searle's wife Monica died and he joined her 6 months later at the age of 91.
It's either sheer luck or divine intervention that Ronald Searle survived the horrors of
war to become one of the greatest British 20th century illustrators.
The always imaginative and graphically expressive work he created over an astonishing
7 decades is a legacy that should never be forgotten. And if Ive managed to bring him
to wider attention and appreciation then I haven't been wasting my time.