To the Kwai and Back

In 1939, as an art student, Ronald Searle volunteered for the army, embarking for Singapore in 1941. Within a month of his arrival there, however, he became a prisoner of the Japanese, and after 14 months in a prisoner-of-war camp, was sent north to a work camp on the Burma Railway. In May 1944, he was sent to the notorious Changi Gaol in Singapore and became one of the few British soldiers to survive imprisonment there. Throughout his captivity, despite the risk, Ronald Searle made drawings to record his experiences. The drawings in this remarkable book were hidden by Searle and smuggled from place to place, stained with the sweat and dirt of his captivity. They are a record of one man's war and are among the most important and moving accounts of the second World War.