Published: 23 September, 2012

Pictured from top down:
1: A member of the Kempei-tai, Singapore, 1944 (left) ; A guard at Changi jail (right)

2: (Left): Prisoners cutting into the mountain near Konyu, June 1943; Sapper Searle aged 21, drawn by a fellow art student shortly before leaving for the Far East in October 1941

3: (Left): A self-portrait of Searle aged 23; a man dying of cholera, Siam 1943

4: (Left): The cholera area at Tarso camp – the man in the foreground was a lucky survivor; A hungry prisoner in Changi jail

To The Kwai – and Back: War Drawings 1939-1945, by Ronald Searle is published by Souvenir Press at £25.

Ronald Searle: ‘The railway of death made me an artist’