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    A tribute to Ronald Searle, creator of St Trinian's

    One of Ronald Searle's St Trinian's cartoonsAfter Ronald Searle, girls’ schools were never the same again.

    Even today, 70 years after their creation, the school girls of St Trinian’s are in fine form. The recent films starring Colin Firth and Rupert Everett breathed fresh life into these anarchic characters.

    Their exploits on the hockey pitch, in the chemistry lab or in the boarding house were outrageous when first published and have continued to amuse over the years.

    In the cartoons, the girls amassed a formidable arsenal of weapons, experimented with poisons, drank Scotch and kept boa constrictors as pets. In the films, first starring Alastair Sim as the headmistress and more recently, Rupert Everett, the girls imitate the gruesome goings-on in the cartoons, fixing this school firmly as a national institution.

    The obituary in The Times (4 Jan 2012) of Ronald Searle, the creator of the girls from St Trinian’s, draws attention to the black world from which these cartoons originated. While the first schoolgirl cartoon was produced in 1941 for a London magazine, in the same year Searle was sent to the Far East to fight.

    With the fall of Singapore, Searle was captured by the Japanese and spent the next four years as a PoW working on the Burmese-Thailand railway. From the age of 19 he watched his friends dying or being tortured on a daily basis, but he continued to sketch, risking severe punishment. Whilst in the camp he recorded the guards, the prisoners, determined to bear witness to the horrors of prison life; but the classrooms of grinning girls continued to flow from his pen during this period.

    Over the years the girls of St Trinian’s have indeed influenced the nation’s perception of girls’ schools: hockey sticks and girls in uniform are associated with the wild world that Searle created. In his day these cartoons were deeply satisfying for the twist they brought to the edifices of respectability; the anarchy and malice of these school girls were the reverse of the public expectation of such establishments.

    Today’s understanding, coloured by the more affectionate send up of modern society found in the films of 2007 and 2009, presents the girls of St Trinian’s as more attractive than their forbears. The geeks, chavs, posh tottie and emos all resonate with the teenage audience at which the films are aimed and provide an entertaining slant on the subgroups within youth culture of today.

    The appeal of today’s films for me is the very clear, if rather laboured, presentation of girl power and what can be achieved through a sense of solidarity and community spirit. This is encouraged by the glamorous headgirl and the whacky headmistress who both know how to bring the girls together in the interests of their beloved school. Wild pop music and serious threat of closure seem to be the uniting elements which draw together this anarchic group of girls.

    If I want to draw in a bit of energy before term begins and it is time to face my cheerful group of school girls, a quick dip into the mad world of St Trinian’s will get me charged up again and ready for action. I just hope that my school girls aren’t planning to do the same!

    By Frances King, Headmistress at Thursday, 5 January 2012

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