Illustrationintheworld

  Henri Fournier (Le Mans, 14 April 1871 - Paris, 18 December 1919) was a French racing driver. Fournier began his career on motorcycles and tricycles. In 1901 he came to the Mors stable and was the most successful driver of that year, winning both Paris-Bordeaux and Paris-Berlin. In addition to his racing career, he performed well in speed tests and set a new record for the mile in his car in the United States. At the 1902 Paris-Vienna he also dominated the first stage with an average speed of 114 km/h, but later had to give up due to a transmission failure. In the autumn of that year, he set the then land speed record at 123 km/h.

Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011) was an English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. Searle was born in Cambridge, England, where his father was a Post Office worker who repaired telephone lines. He started drawing at the age of five and left school (Central School – now Parkside School) at the age of 15. He trained at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University) for two years. In April 1939, realizing that war was inevitable, he abandoned his art studies to enlist in the Royal Engineers. In January 1942, he was in the 287th Field Company, RE in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, he was taken prisoner along with his cousin Tom Fordham Searle, when Singapore fell to the Japanese. He spent the rest of the war as prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. Searle contracted both beriberi and mala...