Tears at St Trinian’s as creator Ronald Searle dies

RONALD Searle, the satirical cartoonist who based his anarchic schoolgirls of St Trinian’s on pupils at a real college in Edinburgh, has died aged 91.

Searle, whose drawings of the gimlet-eyed girls in stockings inspired a series of popular films, died at his home in France with his children by his side.

A statement issued by his daughter, Kate Searle, said he “passed away peacefully in his sleep” in a hospital on 30 December in Draguignan, near Cannes, after a short illness.

Searle’s cartoons of the wild girls of St Trinian’s, who drank, smoked and wreaked revenge on their enemies, first appeared in Lilliput magazine in 1941.

It is believed that the cartoon figures were inspired by the girls of St Trinnean’s School in Palmerston Road, Edinburgh, established by Miss C Fraser Lee and opened in October 1922.

Miss Lee favoured a new form of education known as the Dalton method where the emphasis was on self rather than discipline imposed by teachers. The school, which moved to St Leonard’s Hall near Dalkeith Road in 1925, developed a reputation of being a place “where the girls do what they like”. At the beginning of the Second World War the school moved to Gala House in Galashiels. It closed in 1946 when Miss Lee retired.

The first of a series of films inspired by Searle’s cartoons was The Belles of St Trinian’s, released in 1954. The films starred Alastair Sim, who appeared in drag as headmistress Millicent Fritton, and Joyce Grenfell as Ruby Gates, who attempted to thwart the school’s shady enterprises.

Searle is believed to have met a family by the name of Johnston whose two daughters attended the school. It was this chance meeting which encouraged him to draw a cartoon depicting the ethos of the school.

The role played by the Edinburgh school became widely known when an advert for a reunion coffee morning for former pupils appeared in The Scotsman in September 1955 – the typesetter had mistakenly used Searle’s spelling of the school’s name.

The publicity led to a denial by the school’s headmistress that “her girls” bore any resemblance to those portrayed by Searle.

The characters reached a fresh audience in 2007 with a new film, featuring Rupert Everett in the headmistress role.

Searle, who was born in Cambridge, sold his first sketch at 15. He became a cartoonist for the Cambridge Daily News before enlisting in the Royal Engineers when the Second World War broke out.

Searle was also known as an artist able to portray the darker side of human nature, thanks to the work he produced during his time as a prisoner of war held by the Japanese.

He worked on the construction of the “Death Railway”, a Japanese project to create a rail link between Thailand and Burma, which led to the death of more than 100,000 labourers, including 16,000 Allied prisoners.

Some of the work he created at that time is held by the Imperial War Museum in London.

Fellow artist Gerald Scarfe yesterday paid tribute to Searle, whom he described as his “hero”.

Scarfe said: “He was clever and he was funny and he could draw. A lot of cartoonists come up with an idea first, but Ronald could really draw.

“He created St Trinian’s, which we all loved, and he despised it because he couldn’t get away from it.”

Anita O’Brien, at London’s Cartoon Museum, described Searle as “absolutely unique”.

Searle also provided illustrations for the Molesworth series, written by Geoffrey Willans. His work also appeared in magazines and newspapers, including Punch and The New Yorker.

Searle won a number of awards, including prizes from America’s National Cartoonists’ Society and France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2007.