The son of a railwayman, Ronald Searle was born in Cambridge on 3 March 1920, and educated in the town at the Boys' Central School. He started work as a solicitor's clerk, and then joined the hire purchase department of the co-operative Society, studying in the evenings and later full-time at the Cambridge Daily News from the age of fifteen.
This resulted in his first cartoon for Lilliput, published in October 1941, and later developed into one of his most famous creations, through a series of books and their cinematic spin-offs. Remarkably, he survived the horrific experiences of the Changi Camp, Singapore as a Japanese prisoner-of-war and managed to produce a visual record of life in a prison camp.
On his return to England in 1945, he exhibited the surviving pictures at the Cambridge School of Art, and published Forty Drawings. The exhibition and volume together established his reputation as one of Britain's most powerful draughtsmen, and led to several opportunities to record the atmosphere of post-war Europe. He contributed to Punch and these drawings crystallised in, The Female Approach (1949). Throughout the fifties, he produced a large variety of illustrations, which together seemed present a guide to life in Britain in the 1950's.
Such was his success that his rejection of family and country in a move to Paris in 1961 came as a great surprise. However, it offered a fresh start, resulting in several solo shows, including a major exhibitions at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the Berlin-Dahlem Museum and the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hanover. He also reached a new audience with his contributions to film and television, most notably The Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965).
Note: Searle did too many works to post in one series, so I am posting them in two separate series: 1940-1960, and 1961-2007.
For a more detailed biography see part 1, and for earlier works, see parts 1 - 13 (series 1) & parts 14-15 (series 2)
This is part 16 of a 26-part series on the works of Ronald Searle:
1965 Holiday magazine "The Catskills" :
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| The proper costume for rustic Sullivan County |
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| Where facilities may be questionable in the Catskills |
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| Activities Director |
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| Talk is the sport of many Catskill ladies |
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| There is no law in Sullivan County |
1965 Show magazine:
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| Paris - The Lido |
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| Paris - Café la Deux Magots |
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| Paris - Club Régine |
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| Paris - Club St. Germain-des-Pres |
1965 Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
by Ronald Searle, Bill Richardson and Allen Andrews
published by W. W. Norton & Co. :
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| Movie Poster |
1965-66 The Americanisation of Europe:
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| 1964 Of Mice and Men / Cannery Row by John Steinbeck published by Penguin Books, London |
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| 1966 Haven't We Met Before Somewhere? By Ronald Searle & Heinz Huber |
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| 1966 L'Humour de Ronald Searle Le Figaro 20 October 1966 |
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| 1968 Nikita Krushchev |
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| 1968 Papa Doc, Haiti published in Status magazine, New York pen, wash and watercolour |
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| 1968 The Saturday Evening Post: February 10 Lyndon B. Johnson |
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