Ronald Searle - To the Kwai - And Back - War Drawings 1939-1945

Collins 1986, good condition with dustwrapper also in good condition, some foxing back and front pages

In April 1939, while still at art college, Ronald Searle volunteered for the army. In September 1939 he was called up and two years later he embarked for Singapore where, a month after his arrival, he found himself a prisoner of the Japanese. After 14 months in a POW camp, he was sent north to a work camp on the Burma Railway. Half-starved, debilitated by exhaustion and disease, Searle and his comrades struggled to build a railway that has since been swallowed up by the jungle. In May 1944, he was sent to his last destination as a prisoner, Changi Gaol in Singapore, a prison constructed for 600 prisoners into which the Japanese crammed 5000.
Throughout his captivity, Searle made drawings, determined, despite the risk, to record his experiences. He drew his fellow prisoners and his Japanese guards; he sketched places and people glimpsed while on the move; he recorded significant events such as the triumphant Japanese entering Singapore, the notorious Selarang Incident, and the planes dropping leaflets announcing the end of the war. Stained with the sweat and dirt of decades ago, the drawings in this book are a remarkable record of one man's war, what Searle calls, the graffiti of a condemned man, intending to leave a rough record of his passing t hrough, but who found himself, to his surprise and delight, among the reprieved. Published here for the first time together with his own account of his captivity, these drawings will be recognized as one of the most important and most moving records of WW2...