Ronald Searle

Ronald Searle died a few weeks ago, and this is a brief blog entry to commemorate the fact.  For those who don’t know, he was an artist, most famous for the Molesworth books and St. Trinians – he also drew a series of very famous images from his time as a Japanese POW during the Second World War, when he traded portraits of his captors in exchange for paper and charcoal, creating a stark and rightly renowned visual documentary of his time as a prisoner of war.  He was also, via marriage, my Great Uncle, and though I barely knew him, a drawing he did of my Grandfather’s cat, sits in pride of place above my parent’s mantlepiece, and a fatter, more indulged blue-grey moggy you can barely imagine.  As a primary school kid, I was introduced to Down With Skool, one of the wittiest, most charming books I have ever read, as an incentive for attending dyslexia class in what was, I now realise, a sublime piece of convoluted psychology on my mother’s part.  As it turned out, I wasn’t dyslexic in the least, but it hardly mattered as I had been introduced through this experience to some of the most brilliant drawings and cartoons I’ve ever met.  For anyone who hasn’t seen any of Ronald Searle’s work, I suggest you go looking, and it will doubtless last for many generations yet to come.