Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole - Tapa dura

47 jewel-like drawings by Ronald Searle made for his wife, Monica, each time she underwent chemotherapy.

On New Year’s Eve 1969, Monica Searle was diagnosed with a rare and virulent form of breast cancer. Each time she underwent treatment, Ronald produced a Mrs Mole drawing ‘to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead’. Filled with light and illuminated in glowing colours, the drawings speak of love, optimism and hope. Like the mediaeval illuminated manuscripts such as the 15th-century Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, to which the title of this book refers, the 47 drawings are on an intimate scale and were never intended for publication. The story of Monica’s survival against the odds and the part played by the encouragement of her husband will move many people who have either experienced cancer for themselves or been
affected through a close family member or friend.

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.