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To the Kwai-and Back: War Drawings 1939-1945
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.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 1986
About the author
Ronald Searle
181 books32 followersRonald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is an influential English artist and cartoonist. Best known as the creator of St Trinian's School (the subject of several books and seven full-length films). He is also the co-author (with Geoffrey Willans) of the Molesworth series.
He started drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of 15. In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. He trained at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, currently Anglia Ruskin University, for two years, and in 1941, published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine Lilliput.
In January 1942, he was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. The brutal camp conditions were documented by Searle in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of cholera. Liberated late in 1945, Searle returned to England where he published several of the surviving drawings in fellow prisoner Russell Braddon's The Naked Island. Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book, Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945. At least one of the drawings is on display at the Changi Museum and Chapel, Singapore, but the majority of these original drawings, approximately 300, are in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, along with the works of other POW artists.
Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for Life, Holiday and Punch. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle. He compiled more St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (Down With Skool!, 1953, and How to be Topp, 1954), and with Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder film The Happiest Days of Your Life.
In 1961, he moved to Paris, leaving his family and later marrying Monica Koenig, theater designer and creator of necklaces. In France he worked more on reportage for Life and Holiday and less on cartoons. He also continued to work in a broad range of media and created books (including his well-known cat books), animated films and sculpture for commemorative medals, both for the French Mint and the British Art Medal Society.[2][3] Searle did a considerable amount of designing for the cinema, and in 1965, he completed the opening, intermission and closing credits for the comedy film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. In 1975, the full-length cartoon Dick Deadeye was released. Animated by a number of artists both British and French, it is considered by some to be his greatest achievement, although Searle himself detested the result.
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in America, including the National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award in 1959 and 1965, the Reuben Award in 1960, their Illustration Award in 1980 and their Advertising Award in 1986 and 1987. In 2007, he was decorated with France's highest award, the Légion d'honneur, and in 2009, he received the German Order of Merit. His work has had a great deal of influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In 2005, he was the subject of a BBC documentary on his life and work by Russell Davies.
In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to Wilhelm Busch Museum Hannover (Germany), now renamed Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst. The ancient Summer palace o
He started drawing at the age of five and left school at the age of 15. In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. He trained at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, currently Anglia Ruskin University, for two years, and in 1941, published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine Lilliput.
In January 1942, he was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle. He spent the rest of the war a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. The brutal camp conditions were documented by Searle in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of cholera. Liberated late in 1945, Searle returned to England where he published several of the surviving drawings in fellow prisoner Russell Braddon's The Naked Island. Most of these drawings appear in his 1986 book, Ronald Searle: To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939-1945. At least one of the drawings is on display at the Changi Museum and Chapel, Singapore, but the majority of these original drawings, approximately 300, are in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, along with the works of other POW artists.
Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for Life, Holiday and Punch. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle. He compiled more St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (Down With Skool!, 1953, and How to be Topp, 1954), and with Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder film The Happiest Days of Your Life.
In 1961, he moved to Paris, leaving his family and later marrying Monica Koenig, theater designer and creator of necklaces. In France he worked more on reportage for Life and Holiday and less on cartoons. He also continued to work in a broad range of media and created books (including his well-known cat books), animated films and sculpture for commemorative medals, both for the French Mint and the British Art Medal Society.[2][3] Searle did a considerable amount of designing for the cinema, and in 1965, he completed the opening, intermission and closing credits for the comedy film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. In 1975, the full-length cartoon Dick Deadeye was released. Animated by a number of artists both British and French, it is considered by some to be his greatest achievement, although Searle himself detested the result.
Searle received much recognition for his work, especially in America, including the National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award in 1959 and 1965, the Reuben Award in 1960, their Illustration Award in 1980 and their Advertising Award in 1986 and 1987. In 2007, he was decorated with France's highest award, the Légion d'honneur, and in 2009, he received the German Order of Merit. His work has had a great deal of influence, particularly on American cartoonists, including Pat Oliphant, Matt Groening, Hilary Knight and the animators of Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In 2005, he was the subject of a BBC documentary on his life and work by Russell Davies.
In 2010, he gave about 2,200 of his works as permanent loans to Wilhelm Busch Museum Hannover (Germany), now renamed Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst. The ancient Summer palace o
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 20, 2022
It may be a large volume with loads of pictures, but this is decidedly not a coffee table book – anything smaller would have diminished Searle’s record. These are pictures which require reading; every one, even the most cursory of sketches, is a story with a narrative at which you can only marvel. They’re not studio portraits, they’re largely a clandestine record of both atrocity and humanity.
I read Russell Braddon’s “The Naked Island” when I was a teenager and it’s never been out of my Top 10 books since. I re-read it recently, noted the handful of Searle illustrations it contained (they were prisoners together), and discovered that a whole collection had been published in 1986.
“To the Kwai – and Back” – that dash in the title is a story in its own right. Searle clearly didn’t expect to live to get back, didn’t expect to survive, but somehow kept clinging to life. And somehow poured life into his drawings. He described them as “the graffiti of a condemned man”, but even the most cursory and hurried of the sketches has a life to it, a sense of movement … they’re moving pictures in every sense of the word.
Born and raised in Cambridge, Searle left school at 14, started attending night classes at the Art College in Cambridge when he was 16, became a fulltime student … and then Hitler invaded Poland. He was 19 when he enlisted; at 21 he’d been shipped to the other side of the world … just in time to become part of the detritus of what was supposed to be an army and an impregnable fortress. As England's Far Eastern empire was swept away by the Japanese, tens of thousands of troops were surrendered into captivity. In the lottery of the next few years, some lived, many did not.
Maybe drawing was the vehicle for psychological survival which kept Searle physically alive, which meant he survived while many did not, but he played a dangerous game. He kept the drawings hidden from the Japanese, often concealed under the bodies of men dying of cholera – had they been found, he could well have been lost. He explains he was determined to record what happened to him and his fellow prisoners during “the unphotographed years”. The volume not only celebrates Searle’s genius and determination, it’s also a tribute to the courage of the men who hid his work.
If you’ve seen Searle’s work – I was familiar with the Molesworth illustrations and the St.Trinian’s series – you’ll appreciate his sense of humour (after the war Searle produced illustrations for many of the world's most prestigious publications). And there’s humour in some of these extraordinary drawings, there’s compassion, there’s outrage … there’s life in all of them.
Often hastily captured moments – he traded portraits of the Japanese guards, so there are some detailed studies of them, but he apologises for the often hurried and haphazard record of camp life … there’s something especially poignant about the line drawings of men dying, in the often hastily grabbed images of life on the cusp of extinction where none of the living had any guarantee of survival.
An economy of line, but such vividly present images – there’s movement, there’s animation in them, pictures of predominantly young men, lounging, sitting, conserving what little energy they have, or being forced to labour for the Japanese. Still life, still life.
Searle recorded the atrocities, recorded the humanity, the humour, the prisoners’ quickly learned flair for theft and black market trading.
Searle leaves me with an abiding sense of awe. A wonderful book, simply wonderful.
I read Russell Braddon’s “The Naked Island” when I was a teenager and it’s never been out of my Top 10 books since. I re-read it recently, noted the handful of Searle illustrations it contained (they were prisoners together), and discovered that a whole collection had been published in 1986.
“To the Kwai – and Back” – that dash in the title is a story in its own right. Searle clearly didn’t expect to live to get back, didn’t expect to survive, but somehow kept clinging to life. And somehow poured life into his drawings. He described them as “the graffiti of a condemned man”, but even the most cursory and hurried of the sketches has a life to it, a sense of movement … they’re moving pictures in every sense of the word.
Born and raised in Cambridge, Searle left school at 14, started attending night classes at the Art College in Cambridge when he was 16, became a fulltime student … and then Hitler invaded Poland. He was 19 when he enlisted; at 21 he’d been shipped to the other side of the world … just in time to become part of the detritus of what was supposed to be an army and an impregnable fortress. As England's Far Eastern empire was swept away by the Japanese, tens of thousands of troops were surrendered into captivity. In the lottery of the next few years, some lived, many did not.
Maybe drawing was the vehicle for psychological survival which kept Searle physically alive, which meant he survived while many did not, but he played a dangerous game. He kept the drawings hidden from the Japanese, often concealed under the bodies of men dying of cholera – had they been found, he could well have been lost. He explains he was determined to record what happened to him and his fellow prisoners during “the unphotographed years”. The volume not only celebrates Searle’s genius and determination, it’s also a tribute to the courage of the men who hid his work.
If you’ve seen Searle’s work – I was familiar with the Molesworth illustrations and the St.Trinian’s series – you’ll appreciate his sense of humour (after the war Searle produced illustrations for many of the world's most prestigious publications). And there’s humour in some of these extraordinary drawings, there’s compassion, there’s outrage … there’s life in all of them.
Often hastily captured moments – he traded portraits of the Japanese guards, so there are some detailed studies of them, but he apologises for the often hurried and haphazard record of camp life … there’s something especially poignant about the line drawings of men dying, in the often hastily grabbed images of life on the cusp of extinction where none of the living had any guarantee of survival.
An economy of line, but such vividly present images – there’s movement, there’s animation in them, pictures of predominantly young men, lounging, sitting, conserving what little energy they have, or being forced to labour for the Japanese. Still life, still life.
Searle recorded the atrocities, recorded the humanity, the humour, the prisoners’ quickly learned flair for theft and black market trading.
Searle leaves me with an abiding sense of awe. A wonderful book, simply wonderful.
March 21, 2019
His drawings draw in the observer ... fashioned as they are in the some of the worst environments possible. One can almost hear the groans of the dying, the deep sighing of those who've lost hope, and once can almost smell the rot of a jungle prison camp. His commentary is so thoughtfully given, without rancor or moralizing. Yet so revealing ... of a man who came through it all ... and found healing ... never entirely, of course, but mostly.
September 24, 2025
This is a weird thing to rate - given the circumstances of the drawings, I don't care whether they're good. Yet they are. Equally, I'm not judging this on a political commentary level - that's not what the author was trying to do - but I really appreciate that he got Japanese friends to check that it was fair. Five stars for sheer impressiveness of survival, and the balls to have documented it.
February 21, 2017
This book is outstanding and showcases an entirely unique experience of being a Japanese prisoner of war during WWII. The tale is told simply and well with sketches that were drawn while the author/artist endured his ordeal. The overall impression is powerful.
January 18, 2012
The first chapter 'A Word From the Artist' is humbling, and makes me thankful that Ronald Searle could express his feelings in words just as well as he could draw.
Best known for his St Trinians cartoons, this book contains sketches and memories of his time as a PoW of the Japanese in Singapore and Siam. He died recently, and that's how my attention was drawn to him - they gave a brief mention to this book on the Jeremy Vine Show' whilst talking about his life. The broadcast recalled that he hated the film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' which he said glamorised war, and after reading his memories of his time on the Siam to Burma railway, I can understand why. I realise that people who have experienced war have seen and felt things which we literally can't imagine. Here's what he said just after his return to the UK, when he was finally free.
"But mentally and physically marked though we were by our isolation and virtually incommunicable experiences, we were one small step in advance of those who had not been forced to make the journey to the Kwai and back. We now had in our grasp a thorny, but true, measuring-stick against which to place the things that did or did not matter in life.
Which is everything when one is twenty-five, starting from the bottom, hoping to shoot up like a rocket and not rise like a corpse, from the depths..."
There are a couple of instances of friendship with the 'enemy'. One, was a fellow artist who appreciated his 'work' (PoW play posters and magazine illustrations), and in turn, Ronald has included the sketch Takahashi did in the book. He tried to trace him on his return, but wasn't able to find out what happened to him.
Not only were Ronald's sketches and words totally absorbing, it made me wonder what on earth we complain about, and be thankful we don't have a 'Kwai measuring stick'. Not a book I'd normally choose, but one I will always be truly, truly glad I read.
Best known for his St Trinians cartoons, this book contains sketches and memories of his time as a PoW of the Japanese in Singapore and Siam. He died recently, and that's how my attention was drawn to him - they gave a brief mention to this book on the Jeremy Vine Show' whilst talking about his life. The broadcast recalled that he hated the film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' which he said glamorised war, and after reading his memories of his time on the Siam to Burma railway, I can understand why. I realise that people who have experienced war have seen and felt things which we literally can't imagine. Here's what he said just after his return to the UK, when he was finally free.
"But mentally and physically marked though we were by our isolation and virtually incommunicable experiences, we were one small step in advance of those who had not been forced to make the journey to the Kwai and back. We now had in our grasp a thorny, but true, measuring-stick against which to place the things that did or did not matter in life.
Which is everything when one is twenty-five, starting from the bottom, hoping to shoot up like a rocket and not rise like a corpse, from the depths..."
There are a couple of instances of friendship with the 'enemy'. One, was a fellow artist who appreciated his 'work' (PoW play posters and magazine illustrations), and in turn, Ronald has included the sketch Takahashi did in the book. He tried to trace him on his return, but wasn't able to find out what happened to him.
Not only were Ronald's sketches and words totally absorbing, it made me wonder what on earth we complain about, and be thankful we don't have a 'Kwai measuring stick'. Not a book I'd normally choose, but one I will always be truly, truly glad I read.
October 22, 2015
The drawings alone are good but hardly remarkable, once placed in context as the product of a POW held by the Japanese for over three years though they become something...more. The fact that they were produced and preserved during years of hellish confinement and labor, the fact that both the artwork and its creator somehow survived, gives them a weight beyond the artistic, placing it squarely in the historic.
Want to Read
March 2, 2010This marvellous character is being interviewed on Channel 4 News. His drawings commemorated the POW experience, the trial of Eichmann and a range of favourite British comic book characters including the girls of St Trinians. Tomorrow is his 90th birthday. Congratulations!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews