Letters of a Businessman to His Son - Softcover

Ward, G. Kingsley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002175819 ISBN 13: 9780002175814

Publisher: Collins, 1985

Synopsis

In 1939, as an art student, Ronald Searle volunteered for the army, embarking for Singapore in 1941. Within a month of his arrival there, however, he became a prisoner of the Japanese, and after 14 months in a prisoner-of-war camp, was sent north to a work camp on the Burma Railway. In May 1944, he was sent to the notorious Changi Gaol in Singapore and became one of the few British soldiers to survive imprisonment there. Throughout his captivity, despite the risk, Ronald Searle made drawings to record his experiences. The drawings in this remarkable book were hidden by Searle and smuggled from place to place, stained with the sweat and dirt of his captivity. They are a record of one man’s war and are among the most important and moving accounts of the second World War.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Searle is the most acclaimed satirical graphic artist of the 20th century. He delighted millions with his creation of St Trinians and is a leading contributor to Le Monde and Life magazine, and is the author of numerous books including Illustrated Winespeak, Ronald Searle’s Non-Sexist Dictionary, Searle’s Cats, Slightly Foxed, and Something in the Cellar.

From Publishers Weekly

This remarkable document, which the artist 40 years later modestly deprecates as "graffiti," may in its authenticity and power to stir emotion remind readers of Goya. A British Army volunteer posted to Singapore in 1941, Searle was for four years a prisoner of the Japanese. Determination and talent spurred him to record in pen and ink his own and fellow prisoners' circumstances. Searle was "among the reprieved" and his visual diary survived, now published here for the first time. With ironic, surprisingly lighthearted commentary, he documents Singapore's fall with depictions of torture and executions, the slave-built Siam-Burma railroad where two-thirds of Searle's group died, the horror of insect-ridden jungle laborers beaten to amuse the guards and the eventual return of 5000 men to a Changi prison built for 600. Searle's moving drawings only occasionally suggest the style of his more familiar, recent cartoons.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0002175819
• ISBN 13: 9780002175814
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1