Ronald Searle - a personal thank you

I cannot let the passing of Ronald Searle yesterday, 3rd January 2011, pass without acknowledging how deep an influence this remarkable artist has had on my own work.  Like most kids in the late 50s and early 60s I grew up with the role model of the great Nigel Molesworth before me and the girls of St Trinians of whom I can say the girls of Upper 4B in my own girls' grammar school could have given a run for their money. If my generation turned out to have a taste for subversive humour quite a lot of the responsibility could be laid at the door of Ronald Searle whose images captured the zeitgeist perfectly.  I was also influenced by a book he illustrated of which we had a copy at home, the title of which I forget, but it consisted of portraits of Londoners - not celebrated or notorious Londoners but the sort of ordinary people, since I lived in London at the time, that I might meet any day of the week.  I was too young for his war drawings but having seen them since I now understand why my father, who fought in Burma, was so reluctant to talk about his experiences.  All I know is that at Cox's Bazaar on the India/Burma border the jewel of the British Empire was defended by 25 RAF blokes and about a hundred indian troops.  They had a machine gun on the beach (just the one) and no ammunition for it.  The boat called once a week with supplies, otherwise they were on their own.  When they received a consignment from home it contained balaclava helmets and gloves knitted dutifully by WI ladies who might have been distressed to know they were given to men serving in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  The Japanese once sent a plane over to reconnoitre but otherwise mercifully left them alone.  Seeing Ronald Searle's drawings reminded me that years afterwards when asked to greet Japanese visitors to the London Borough where he worked my father - the friendliest and most forgiving of men - had great difficulty in agreeing to do this.  He accepted that the visitors were all too young to have served in the war and yet he still found it hard to face them and be civil.  Ronald Searle's drawings allowed me to understand why that was.  I never met him and did not know him but his influence in subtle ways is all over my work and for that I thank him.  Goodbye and God Bless.