Searle, Ronald

Ronald Searle, in full Ronald William Fordham Searle, (born March 3, 1920, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England—died December 30, 2011, Draguignan, France), British graphic satirist, best known for his cartoons of the girls at an imaginary school he called St. Trinian’s.

Searle was educated at the Cambridge School of Art and published his first humorous work in the late 1930s. During World War II he served with the Royal Engineers and was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore. A book of grim drawings of his experiences was published after the war. From 1946 his work appeared in national magazines. He first contributed to Punch in 1949 and joined its staff in 1956. He had created the bizarre schoolgirls of St. Trinian’s in 1941 and continued to draw them until 1953; they were the subject of four motion pictures (the first being The Belles of St. Trinian’s [1954]) and several books. In 1961 Searle moved to France.

Searle’s more than 50 books included Forty Drawings (1946), The Female Approach (1949), Modern Types (1959), and Searle in the Sixties (1964). Later works included Searle’s Cats (1967), The Rake’s Progress (1968), Secret Sketchbook (1970), Zoodiac (1977), and The Situation Is Hopeless (1980). Ronald Searle (1978) is a collection of his best work, with biographical notes and a bibliography.