Ronald Searle: Drawings for a beloved wife – in pictures

Drawing 13 Searle presented Monica with a 'Mrs Mole' drawing each time she underwent treatment, 'to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead' Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 18 Taken together, the drawings became 'a minuscule, romantic saga of Mrs Mole pottering about a dream house in a Provencal village' Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 22 The house in the paintings was, in fact, a decrepit French farmhouse which the Searles had bought three months before Monica's diagnosis, and which Monica converted over the course of her treatment Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 26 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 27 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 30 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 32 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 34 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 42 Photograph: Harper Collins Drawing 43 When Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer on New Year's Eve 1969, she was given six months to live. 'That' says Searle in his introduction, 'was over 40 years ago. She beat the unexpected and the seemingly inevitable and now this, miraculously, is her book' Photograph: Harper Collins