X-Rated Searle

As a Ronald Searle/Ralph Steadman fan I often trawl the second-hand bookshops of Charing X Road looking for old or out of print editions. I recently found 'Ronald Searle's Secret Sketchbook'. It's a small volume of very rough & loose pen drawings that Searle made in the red light district of Hamburg. An American magazine sent him there on assignment to document the colourful 'night-life' & the results are rapidly executed sketches of strippers, prostitutes, johns & punters. The book's jacket says 'this sketchbookis an observer's notebook, not a participator's, and was never intended originally to be seen in print'.