sovay: (Claude Rains)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2012-01-03 06:55 pm
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  • Current Music: Tom Lehrer, "The Irish Ballad"

Hands up the girl who burnt down the east wing last night

Ronald Searle. I was in college before I'd heard of St. Trinian's and graduate school before I was introduced to Molesworth. What we had in the house when I was growing up was Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle (1981), which traumatized me slightly at an impressionable age with its enthusiastic renderings of "The Irish Ballad" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." I don't have even the marginal artistic skills I'd need to send him off in the appropriate fashion, so all I can say is: ave atque vale, as any fule kno; I'm off to knock somebody's head in with a hockey stick and set something on fire.

Donald Swann with Charlotte Mitchell & Shirley Hall, "Surly Girls"

Hail St. Trinian's Senior High!
Here's to our motto 'Do or Die!'
Kick the girls and make them cry!
Up! St. Trinian's girls!
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sovay: (Rotwang)

[personal profile] sovay 2012-01-04 08:48 am (UTC)(link)
Sounds like a match made in Heaven. Okay, well, maybe not there, exactly... I think I'm going to have to ILL it, in any even

It's the sheet music for a substantial number of Tom Lehrer's songs with, indeed, not enough illustrations by Ronald Searle, but the ones there are are doozies. Our copy has been falling apart for years; I'm constantly on the lookout in good-quality used book stores for a replacement. It's one of those artifacts that just needed to exist.

[identity profile] desperance.livejournal.com 2012-01-04 12:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I see the paperback over here every now and then. I could pick you up a copy in decent nick, most likely, if you'd like that.
sovay: (Morell: quizzical)

[personal profile] sovay 2012-01-04 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I see the paperback over here every now and then. I could pick you up a copy in decent nick, most likely, if you'd like that.

You keep offering me books! I'm going to owe you a library!

[identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com 2012-01-04 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
It's one of those artifacts that just needed to exist.

Indeed.

I'm going to look for more Searle, in general. I'm thinking I'm seeing his influence on a lot of illustrators in a way I'd never really thought of, before, and I'd like to develop my thoughts enough to get a better idea of whether it's really there or not.
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