Ronald Searle
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Ronald Searle (born March 3, 1920) is a British cartoonist. He is the creator of, among other things, St Trinian's School and co-author (with Geoffrey Willans) of the Molesworth tetralogy.
He was born in Cambridge, started drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of fifteen. When World War II broke out, he enlisted, and joined the Royal Engineers. He trained for two years in the United Kingdom, and, in 1941, published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the art magazine Lilliput. In January 1941, he was stationed in Singapore. After Singapore fell to the Japanese, he was taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, and worked on the Siam-Burma railway. While a prisoner, he made drawings of camp life, which he hid under the mattresses of prisoners suffering from cholera. He was liberated in 1945, and took the surviving drawings home with him and published them.
He married Kaye Webb in 1947, after she fell pregnant. They had twins, Kate and Johnny. Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s: drawings for Punch, cartoons for the Tribune, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle, along with more St Trinian's books, Molesworth, as well as travel books, animation for Disney, and advertisements, posters etc. In 1960 he was awarded the Reuben Award.
In 1961 he left England and moved to Paris, where he married Monica Koenig. In France, he worked more on painting, and less on cartoons, leading to a series of paintings entitled "Anatomies and Decapitations". He continued to work in a broad range of media, and produced books (including his well-known cat books), animations for films, even designs for medals.
His work has had considerable influence on later cartoonists, including Matt Groening, among others.
External links
- Comiclopedia: Ronald Searle (http://www.lambiek.net/searle_ronald.htm)
- Scion of a Noble Line-Interview with Ronald Searle (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4099415,00.html)