Ronald Searle, CBE, RDI, was born in Cambridge in 1920. He is best known as the creator of St Trinian's school and the Molesworth series (with Geoffrey Willans). He started drawing at the age of 5 and left school at the age of 15. In 1942 he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was sent to the Kwai jungle, to work on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. Liberated in 1945, he returned to England, with over 300 drawings that survived, many of which were published in the moving To the Kwai and Back. He married Kaye Webb, founder of Puffin Books, in 1947. In 1961 he moved to Paris and later married Monica Koenig. Since 1975, they have lived and worked in the mountains of Haute Provence. In 2007 he was decorated with France's highest award, the Legion d'Honneur and in 2009 he received the German Order of Merit.