Beloved cartoonist Ronald Searle has passed away at the age of 91 on Saturday after a short illness.
Best known for his spiky comic drawings depicting the outrageous antics of the St Trinian’s girls, and for his illustrations of the Molesworth series, written by Geoffrey Willans and which, as any fule kno, tells of life at the boys’ prep school St Custard’s.
Searle “created an alternative to the conformity of Harold Macmillan’s Britain”, said his publisher Simon Winder. “He gave Britain in the 1950s particularly a sense of anarchy. He was extraordinarily sceptical about all forms of authority [and] there’s something just astonishingly anarchic about Molesworth and St Trinian’s,” said Winder. “That’s why they have appealed to so many generations.”
I loved his illustrations for the Molesworth books. But then I went to a school not unlike St Custard’s, chiz.
Searle was one of the most imitated and influential illustrators of the 20th Century. I’m not familiar with the St. Trinian’s or Molesworth series, I’ll have to go find those. I loved the art and covers he did for The New Yorker magazine, and there’s a great book on his work called Ronald Searle In Perspective, published in 1985, that’s a must-have for any fan of his stuff.