This comprehensive and richly illustrated biography chronicles the life and work of the well-known British cartoonist, who turned 70 in 1990. The offspring of Searle's macabre imagination are here, including the wicked schoolgirls of St. Trinians, the spindly, goggle-eyed people caught up in all manner of grotesque and exasperating predicaments, the roguish animals and the demented-looking public figures. Davies examines the many sobering events in Searle's life that have influenced his art--his complicated relationship with his first wife and children, his second wife's near-fatal battle with cancer and his long incarceration in a Japanese prison camp in Singapore during WW II, which he documented in graphically detailed drawings. There are many black-and-white and color reproductions of the artist's work, as well as photographs of Searle and his family, and the descriptive captions that freelance journalist Davies provides for the illustrations are as illuminating as his well researched and very readable text.