Don’t meet your heroes, they say. Unless they’re the sublime artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle, I say. I had the great thrill of interviewing Searle (1920-2011) on his 90th birthday in 2010. In his tower house, high in the Provence hills in France, he told me how he’d created my anarchic pin-ups – the wicked girls of St Trinian’s – and Britain’s naughtiest schoolboy, Nigel Molesworth, the Curse of St Custard’s School.
What a joy it is to have one of his drawings on the cover of my book – a collection of the best Latin lines, from “Veni, vidi, vici” to “Carpe diem”.
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