"Down With Skool" by Geoffrey Wilans and Ronald Searle, Part 3, (Published by Max Parrish, London 1953)

 

 

To this day, it's hard to find any illustrator that hasn't been influenced by Searle's extra-ordinary work. This book is full of these characters (120 drawings in all!), each one so unique and real - you can't help thinking that you've met people like them or seen some in a movie. His deceptively loose and simple line is so descriptive of the character's appearance and soul yet distorting and exaggerating their shape for comical effect.

 

There's a very good review of this book to be found on Matt Jones' Ronald Searle tribute blog http://ronaldsearle.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/molesworth.html together with many more illustrations.

 

 

"Down With Skool" by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, Part 2, (Published by Max Parrish, London 1953)

 

 

 

"Down With Skool" By Goeffrey Willans and Ronald Searle (published by Max Parrish, London 1953)

 

 

Picked this Ronald Searle 1953 classic a couple of weeks ago from a bookshop in Edinburgh (Till's brilliant second-hand bookshop is full of treasures like this, comics, old film posters and much more... here's their website http://www.tillsbookshop.co.uk/index.aspx if anybody wants to check them out). 

The main character, Nigel Molesworth, had already been created by Geoffrey Willans for Punch magazine before Searle was approached to produce the characters for the story. Following its huge success (which, incidentally, surpassed the sales of "The Terror Of St. Trinian's"(1952) that Searle is more famous for) there were two more books published in the same series before the author's death in 1958. More details on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth