April 17, 1971

Ronald Searle, (March 3, 1920 to December 30, 2011) was a British cartoonist He survived a Japanese prison camp, to become one of the best known artists in England. His portrayals of quite dreadful children at a girl's school, which he called St. Trinians, went beyond paper to film renderings. He moved to France in 1961, partly to avoid dealing personally with his divorce from children's editor, Kaye Webb. There he married his new love, and by all reports they lived very happily in Provence. He published his illustrations in Punch, and did 40 New Yorker covers, including one for the April 17, 1971 issue -- he drew a hippie drifting along in a cloud of butterflies.

His cartoons sometimes show the most adorable cats--fluffy, and clueless, and so riveting that I believe one of his biographers, who insisted he did not like cats, must have been mistaken.