Searle's Cats

Ronald Searle was born in Cambridge, England on March 3, 1920. At the age of 15, he paid for his own art school classes by working for a cartoonist at The Cambridge Daily News. In 1939 he passed a government drafting test and joined the Army as an architectural draftsman. During this time, he also made impressionistic watercolor sketches of fellow soldiers and cartoons poking fun at military conventions. His work was first published in the magazine Lilliput in 1941. During the war, he was captured by the Japanese and sent to Changi prison, which provided forced labor for building the Burma railway. He recorded the deplorable conditions of his camp and the fates of fellow soldiers by drawing with crude implements and scraps of paper. After he was released in 1945, his drawings were exhibited in Cambridge and were later published in 1986 as a book entitled To the Kwai - and Back: War Drawings 1939-1945.

In 1948, he began writing and illustrating parodies about the students at a fictional English girls' school called St. Trinian's and publishing them in Lilliput. This led to a series of popular books, which included Hurrah for St. Trinian's, The Terror of St. Trinian's, and The St. Trinian's Story. His other books included Searle's Cats, The Square Egg, Hello - Where Did All the People Go?, The Secret Sketchbook, and More Cats. He also drew illustrations for numerous magazines and newspapers including The New Yorker, TV Guide, Le Monde, Life magazine, The New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He died on December 30, 2011 at the age of 91.

030