To The Kwai - And Back

By Ronald Searle - Hardback, £25.00

In 1939, as an art student, Ronald Searle volunteered for the army, called up in September he embarked for Singapore in 1941. Within a month of his arrival there, he was a prisoner of the Japanese. After fourteen months in a prisoner-of-war camp Ronald Searle was sent north, to work camp on the Burma Star. In May 1944 he was sent to the notorious Changi Gaol in Singapore and was one of the few British soldiers to survive imprisonment there. Throughout his captivity, despite the risk, Ronald Searle made drawings, determined to record his experiences. He drew his fellow prisoners, and their Japanese guards; he recorded historic moments, the Japanese triumphantly entering Singapore, the planes dropping leaflets that announced the end of the war. 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. They document the sacrifice of those who served in the Far East and are testimony to Ronald Searle's unique talent.