The Railway Man

Ronald Searle's wartime sketches of his POW experience  feature in the new film 'The Railway Man' - based on Eric Lomax's account of his time on the Thai-Burma 'Death Railway'.  Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the film depicts scenes  of camp internment and jungle clearing straight out of Searle's sketches.  In one scene Nicole Kidman playing Lomax's wife picks up a copy of Searle's 'To the Kwai and Back' and flicks through the pages.

 

(Thanks to Tony Rosenast & Uli Meyer)

"An article by John Connell in Strand Magazine for October 1947 dealing with a subject Searle was sadly well able to illustrate - he himself had been a Japanese POW in the Second World War. This shows the scene in a camp hospital."

From Mike Ashworth's Flickr set

PoW Memorial

"A new memorial to PoWs in the Far East has just been unveiled in London, it features a drawing by Searle."  Anita O'Brien of the London Cartoon Museum informs me.

Read about it in the Camden New Journal here
There's also a piece by Valerie Grove who interviewed Searle on his 90th birthday for the Times.

Changi Gaol 3

This just in from reader Mike Poole. His grandfather George 'Piggy' Poole was interned in Changi Gaol with Searle & collaborated on prison magazine 'SURVIVOR' with him. Mike has a copy of the magazine in his possession & sent me the following scans.


This issue features a story written by Poole & illustrated by Searle.

Letter from Searle to Poole:

Sonia Kretschmar dug up the following article on 'The Survivor'

Changi Gaol part 1 and part 2