St Trinian's School

St Trinian's is a fictional girls' school created by Ronald Searle, a British cartoonist. The school is an antithesis to Enid Blyton-type posh girls' schools, in that its pupils are wicked, manipulative and generally more like girls in a real school. The teachers (or mistresses as female teachers in Britain are known) are also disreputable. From preliminary sketches, St Trinian's became a series of films featuring such British names as Alastair Sim (in drag as the schoolmistress, but also playing her brother), George Cole as Flash Harry, and Joyce Grenfell as Crawfie. The school got into a number of dodgy enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, which is why they were always threatened with closure. There are plans to make a new film, possibly with Kylie Minogue.

The books were:

• 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 Sly)
• Souls in Torment (1953)

The films were:

• The Belles of St Trinian's
• Pure Hell at St Trinian's
• Blue Murder at St Trinian's
• The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery
• The Wildcats of St Trinian's (with Maureen Lipman taking on the Joyce Grenfell role)

There was actually a real St. Trinnean's School for Girls in Edinburgh until the end of World War II; a fact which came to notice when the Scotsman announced a reunion coffee party for old girls in September 1955 (The fictional school had become so fixed in the national consciousness by this time that the typesetter adopted Searle's spelling in the advertisement rather than the correct spelling). In an interview with the Sunday Express, the Headmistress firmly denied that her girls were anything like the fictional ones.

External link

• Ronald Searle & the St Trinian's Cartoons