View source for St Trinian's School

{{Short description|British gag cartoon comic strip series}}
{{More citations needed|date=January 2024}}
{{For-multi|the 2007 film|St Trinian's (film)|the actual progressive school|St Trinnean's School}}

[[Image:sttrinians.jpg|right|thumb|Cover of a modern re-issue of St Trinian's drawings]]

'''''St Trinian's''''' is a British [[gag cartoon]] comic strip series, created and drawn by [[Ronald Searle]] from 1946 until 1952.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ju90.co.uk/ron.htm|title = 8: II. Ronald Searle & the St Trinian's Cartoons}}</ref> The cartoons all centre on a [[boarding school]] for girls, where the teachers are sadists and the girls are [[juvenile delinquents]]. This [[black comedy]] series was Searle's most famous work and inspired a popular series of comedy films.

==Concept==
Searle published his first St Trinian's School cartoon in 1941 in the magazine ''[[Lilliput (magazine)|Lilliput]]''. He was captured at Singapore in 1942 and spent the rest of the Second World War as a [[Far East prisoners of war|prisoner of the Japanese]]. After the war, in 1946 Searle started making new cartoons about the girls, but the content was much darker compared to the earlier years.<ref>{{cite web|title=Ronald Searle|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8989894/Ronald-Searle.html|website=Telegraph.co.uk|date=3 January 2012 |access-date=21 July 2017|language=en}}</ref>

The school is the [[antithesis]] of the type of posh girls' [[boarding school]] depicted by [[Enid Blyton]] or [[Angela Brazil]]; its female pupils are bad and often well armed, and mayhem is rife. The schoolmistresses are also disreputable. Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls drank, gambled and smoked. It is reputed that the [[gymslip]] style of dress worn by the girls was closely modelled on the school uniform of [[James Allen's Girls' School]] (JAGS) in [[Dulwich]], which Searle's daughter Kate attended.

In the 1950s, films were developed that were based on the cartoon series. These comedies implied that the girls at the school were the daughters of dubious characters, such as [[gangster]]s, crooks, and shady [[bookmaker]]s. The institution is often referred to as a "female [[borstal]]", as if it were a reform school.

==The inspiration==
{| align=right
| [[Image:St-leonards-pollock-edinburgh.jpg|thumb|right|200px|St Leonard's Hall, Pollock Halls of Residence, University of Edinburgh. <br />Home of [[St Trinnean's School]] for Girls until World War II, when the school was moved to the countryside<ref>Source: Downloaded from http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/features/featurefirst10257.html</ref>]]
[[Image:Pollock 1.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Rear of St Leonard's Hall, Pollock Halls of Residence, University of Edinburgh]]
|}
During 1941 Searle had gone to the artists' community in the village of [[Kirkcudbright]]. Whilst visiting the family Johnston, he made a drawing to please their two schoolgirl daughters, Cécilé and Pat, (their school had been evacuated to [[New Gala House]] in [[Galashiels]] in the [[Scottish Borders]] owing to the war). Searle was puzzled as to why two schoolgirls should seem so keen to return to their school, an Academy for Young Ladies in Dalkeith Road known as [[St Trinnean's]].<ref>Webb, K. ''The St. Trinian's Story'' (Penguin Books, 1959)</ref><ref>[[Davies, Russell]]. ''Ronald Searle: A Biography'' (Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1990)</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/revealed-belles-of-the-real-st-trinians-1179972.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/revealed-belles-of-the-real-st-trinians-1179972.html |archive-date=2022-05-24 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live | title=Revealed: belles of the real St Trinians | work=The Independent | date=October 22, 1998 | access-date=April 23, 2017 | author=Goodwin, Stephen}}</ref> The school was of the experimental sort, and allowed its pupils a certain degree of freedom and autonomy in their own educational choices. The school's original building is now part of the [[University of Edinburgh]].

Searle's St Trinian's was based on two [[Private schools in the United Kingdom|private]] girls' schools in [[Cambridge]] – [[Perse School for Girls]], now known as the co-educational Stephen Perse Foundation, and [[St Mary's School, Cambridge|St Mary's School]] for girls, a Catholic school established by the Sisters of Mary Ward. Growing up in Cambridge, Searle regularly saw the girls on their way to and from school; they originally inspired his cartoons and characters. The Perse School for Girls' Archive area holds several original St Trinian's books, given to the school by Ronald Searle. He also based the school partly on the former Cambridgeshire High School for Girls (now [[Long Road Sixth Form College]]).<ref>[http://www.cambridgefirst.co.uk/news/the_cambridge_schoolgirls_who_inspired_st_trinian_s_1_1168916 here "The Cambridge Schoolgirls who inspired "St Trinian's"]</ref>

During his BBC interview<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p00935gq Desert Island Disks: Ronald Searle]  ''BBC - Sounds'' – Retrieved 20 April 2020</ref> Searle agreed that the cruelty depicted at St Trinian's derived partly from his captivity during World War II but stressed that he included it only because the ignoble aspect to warfare in general had become more widely known.

==Books==
* ''Hurrah for St Trinian's'' (1948)
* ''The Female Approach'' (1950)
* ''Back to the Slaughterhouse'' (1952)
* ''The Terror of St Trinians'' or ''Angela's Prince Charming'' (1952; text by Timothy Shy, pen-name for [[D. B. Wyndham Lewis]])
* ''Souls in Torment'' (1953)

==Film adaptations==
In the 1950s, a series of ''St Trinian''{{'}}s comedy films were made, featuring well-known British actors, including [[Alastair Sim]] (in [[drag (clothing)|drag]] as the headmistress, and also playing her brother); [[George Cole (actor)|George Cole]] as [[spiv]] "[[Flash Harry (St Trinian's)|Flash Harry]]", [[Joyce Grenfell]] as Sgt Ruby Gates, a beleaguered policewoman; and [[Richard Wattis]] and [[Eric Barker]] as the civil servants at the [[Ministry of Education (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Education]] for whom the school is a source of constant frustration and nervous breakdowns.  Searle's cartoons appeared in the [[Film title design|films' main title design]].

In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, and, as a result, was always threatened with closure by the Ministry. (In the last of the original four, this became the "Ministry of Schools", possibly because of fears of a libel action from a real Minister of Education.) The first four films form a chronological quartet, and were produced by [[Frank Launder]] and [[Sidney Gilliat]]. They had earlier produced ''[[The Happiest Days of Your Life (film)|The Happiest Days of Your Life]]'' (1950), a stylistically similar school comedy, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Richard Wattis, [[Guy Middleton]], and [[Bernadette O'Farrell]], all of whom later appeared in the St Trinian's series, often playing similar characters.

[[Chronicles of Barsetshire|Barchester]] and [[Barsetshire|Barset]] were used as names for the fictional towns near which St Trinian's School was supposedly located in the original films. In ''Blue Murder at St Trinian's'', a signpost was marked as 2 miles to Barset, 8 miles to Wantage, indicating a location in what was [[Berkshire]] at the time of filming (transferred to [[Oxfordshire]] in 1974).

St Trinian's is depicted as an unorthodox girls' school where the younger girls wreak havoc and the older girls express their femininity overtly, turning their shapeless schoolgirl dress into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the times. St Trinian's is often invoked in discussions about groups of schoolgirls running amok.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

The St Trinian's girls themselves come in two categories: the Fourth Form, most closely resembling Searle's original drawings of ink-stained, ungovernable pranksters, and the much older Sixth Form, sexually precocious to a degree that may have seemed alarming to some in 1954.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

In the films, the Fourth Form includes a number of much younger girls who are the most ferocious of them all. It is something of a rule of thumb that the smaller a St Trinian's is, the more dangerous she is—especially when armed, most commonly with a [[lacrosse]] or [[field hockey|hockey]] stick—though none of them can ever be considered harmless.

In the first two films, St Trinian's is presided over by the genial Miss Millicent Fritton (Sim in drag), whose philosophy is summed up as: "In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared." Later other headmistresses included [[Dora Bryan]] in ''The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery''.

In December 2007, a new film, ''[[St Trinian's (film)|St Trinian's]]'', was released. The cast included [[Rupert Everett]], [[Colin Firth]], [[Russell Brand]], [[Lily Cole]], [[Talulah Riley]], [[Stephen Fry]], and [[Gemma Arterton]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6544069.stm |title=Model Cole joins Trinian's film | publisher=[[BBC News]] | date=11 April 2007 | access-date=6 January 2010}}</ref> Reviews were mixed.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/st_trinians/|title=St Trinian's (2009) |publisher = [[Rotten Tomatoes]] | access-date = 3 March 2010}}</ref> A second new St Trinian's film, ''[[St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold]]'', was released in 2009.

; The first series
# ''[[The Belles of St Trinian's]]'' (1954)
# ''[[Blue Murder at St Trinian's]]'' (1957)
# ''[[The Pure Hell of St Trinian's]]'' (1960)
# ''[[The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery]]'' (1966)

; The first reboot
* ''[[The Wildcats of St Trinian's]]'' (1980, with [[Maureen Lipman]] taking on the Joyce Grenfell role)

; The second reboot
# ''[[St Trinian's (film)|St Trinian's]]'' (2007)
# ''[[St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold]]'' (2009)

===Coat of arms===
The school's coat of arms was originally shown as a black [[Skull and crossbones (poison)|skull-and-crossbones]] on a field of white. This was later changed to a white [[tau cross]] (symbolising the "T" in Trinian's) on a black field bordered white.

===School motto===
The school has no fixed motto but has had several suggested ones. The school's motto is depicted in the original movies from the 1950s and 1960s as ''[[In flagrante delicto]]'' ("Caught in the Act"). This can be seen on the trophy shelf, above the stairs in ''The Belles of St Trinian's'' (1954). The lyrics of the original theme song by Sidney Gilliat (c. 1954) imply that the school's motto is "Get your blow in first"<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Webb |editor-first=Kaye |title=The St Trinian's Story |location=London; New York (respectively) |publisher=Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell |year=1959 |pages=44–45 |oclc=2898524}}</ref> (''Semper debeatis percutis ictu primo'').

A poem in one of Searle's books called "St Trinian's Soccer Song", by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and [[Johnny Dankworth]], states that the motto is ''Floreat St Trinian's'' ("May St Trinian's Bloom/Flourish"),<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Webb |editor-first=Kaye |title=The St Trinian's Story |location=London; New York (respectively) |publisher=Perpetua Books; London House & Maxwell |year=1959 |pages=46–48 |oclc=2898524}}</ref> a reference to the motto of [[Eton College|Eton]] (''Floreat Etona''—"May Eton Flourish").

===School songs===
The musical score for the St Trinian films was written by [[Malcolm Arnold]] and included the school song, with words accredited to Sidney Gilliat (1954).<ref>{{Cite video |title=Original St. Trinian's song |medium=video |publisher=[[YouTube]] |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMrXW82YMI/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211212/5FMrXW82YMI |archive-date=2021-12-12 |url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}</ref> In the 2007 film, a new school song, written by [[Girls Aloud]], was called "Defenders of Anarchy". The school also has a fight song.

==In popular culture==
{{In popular culture|section|date=January 2024}}
* Between 1968 and 1972, the [[United Kingdom|British]] comic-book ''[[The Beano]]'' ran a series entitled ''[[The Belles of St. Lemons]]'', which was inspired by the original St Trinian's cartoons by [[Ronald Searle]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}}
* The gauge 0 model train manufacturer [[ACE Trains]] produce an "unorthodox" model of a British [[SR V Schools class|Schools Class steam locomotive]] (which were [[List of SR V "Schools" class locomotives|named after British schools]]), numbered 1922 and named "St Trinneans" (sic). This model is bright pink and has a pair of uniformed schoolgirls as driver and fireman.<ref>[http://www.acetrainslondon.com/display%20pages/e10listings.html E/10 Schools class Locomotive] ''ACE Trains''. Retrieved 16 May 2013.</ref>
* In 1990, [[Chris Claremont]] and [[Ron Wagner]] paid tribute to both Searle and St Trinian's in a [[story arc]] in the [[Marvel Comics|Marvel]] [[comic book]] ''[[Excalibur (comics)|Excalibur]]'', in which [[Kitty Pryde]] became a student at "St Searle's School for Young Ladies".<ref>''[[Excalibur (comics)|Excalibur]]'', #32{{en dash}}34</ref> Towards the end of the arc, Commander Dai Thomas exclaims, "I took a look at the [[Special Branch (Metropolitan Police)|Special Branch]] records. Have you any notion what this school's ''done'' in the past? With them about, who needs the perishing [[Special Air Service|SAS]]?"<ref>''Excalibur'', #34, p. 28</ref>

==See also==
* [[:Category:St Trinian's films]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.ju90.co.uk/ron.htm Ronald Searle and the ''St Trinian''{{'}}s Cartoons]
* [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/487587/index.html Link to the first movie]
* [http://secure.britannica.com/eb/article-9066482/Ronald-Searle#79255.hook About the creator]
* [http://flipanimation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/uli-meyer-brings-ronald-searles-st.html St Trinians animated by Uli Meyer Studios] Retrieved January 2013

{{St Trinians}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Trinian's School}}
[[Category:1946 comics debuts]]
[[Category:1952 comics endings]]
[[Category:Child characters in comics]]
[[Category:Boarding school fiction]]
[[Category:British comic strips]]
[[Category:British black comedy cartoons]]
[[Category:British black comedy comics]]
[[Category:British comics adapted into films]]
[[Category:British comics characters]]
[[Category:Comics about children]]
[[Category:Comics about women]]
[[Category:Comics characters introduced in 1941]]
[[Category:Comics set in schools]]
[[Category:Comics set in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Female characters in comics]]
[[Category:Fictional buildings and structures originating in comic books]]
[[Category:Fictional locations in comics]]
[[Category:Fictional schools]]
[[Category:Fictional tricksters]]
[[Category:Gag-a-day comics]]
[[Category:Gag cartoon comics]]