Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School by Frank Richards.

Published by Charles Skilton September 1947 (Reprinted 1947, 1948 and 1950)

Illustrated by R.J.MacDonald.   

First published September 1947 , this is the book that kick-started Charles Hamilton’s career. The very first of the famous Billy Bunter books destined to turn Frank Richards into a celebrity.

Having read the now famous essay by George Orwell in ‘Horizon’ magazine, publisher Charles Skilton contacted Hamilton with a view to publishing Billy Bunter in book form. After sorting out the legal & copyright difficulties, and arranging to pay Hamilton royalties – an idea that appeared novel to the author at the time, this book rolled of the presses. Despite the still existent paper-shortages, and restrictions on numbers, Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School was an immediate success.

Apart from the excellence of the story, this was also largely due to the attractive yellow & green covers, illustrated by former Magnet artist R J Macdonald, who was to continue with this work until his death, when he was succeeded by Mr. Chapman.

As was to become the custom, the opening chapter begins with dialogue. In this case, the voice of Mr. Quelch.

It is amazing that Hamilton was able to resume, after a seven-year pause, the same high standard of writing about Greyfriars School that had ended abruptly in 1940.

The format of the books was slightly different of course. Until paper shortages had forced the closure of The Magnet, Hamilton had been writing long, cover-to-cover stories. Even when, toward the end, the number of pages had been reduced, this had allowed the author full reign to develop his idiosyncratic style of reiteration & stylised dialogue. To some extent this was necessarily curtailed in the books, but, despite this, the stories still retained most of their inimitable appeal.

In this story all the familiar characters are present. Bunter is still raiding tuck and a dunce in class. The story opens with him asleep in class. Mr Quelch is still the ‘just beast’ he had been in The Magnet. Smithy, the Famous Five, Horace Coker; all are present. We even have one of those low class villains who had been regularly menacing Greyfriars fellows for the past forty years, Mr Nosey Jenkins. We know at once that Nosey is a wrong ‘un'

He was not well dressed – he wore a ragged coat too large for him, shabby trousers to small for him, a battered bowler hat that only a very impecunious tramp would have picked up of a rubbish-heap, and a blue-spotted neck cloth. His chin was adorned by a three-days beard: and the rest of his countenance looked seriously in need of a wash. He had little red-rimmed eyes, with an unpleasant threatening glint in them, and his nose had a queer twist sideways as if it had had a hard knock sometime from a vigorous fist, and had never been able to get it’s bearing since. Altogether, he looked a rather unpleasant customer, and rather alarming to meet in a lonely, shaded spot.

The plot is a familiar one. This does not really matter in a Greyfriars story. The addictive magic; the appeal of Frank Richards does not, any more than that of Chesterton, or Conan-Doyle, rely on novel or complex plots.

Unsurprisingly, neither Mr. Quelch, nor Mr. Bunter is satisfied with the fat owl’s performance at Greyfriars.

For some reason Quelch has described Bunter as poor in class, slack at games, untruthful, and a pilferer of tuck. Mr Bunter has decided to take his hopeful son out of school & provide him instead with a stool at his office.

Bunter has the remainder of the term to make amends.

He does his best, but he does not help his cause by snooping Coker’s hamper. Or by dodging a cricket match Mr Quelch has especially given him leave from detention to play in. 

Finally, realising that his goose is cooked, Bunter decides on one last act of revenge on his unjust & uncaring beak.

Luckily, Bunter’s luck is good. Nosey Jenkins unwittingly becomes the fat owl’s saviour.

Instead of sending Mr Bunter a very bad report on his son, Quelch is able to give a very good one. Indeed, he is able to present Bunter with ‘a large box of toffees,’ not as a reward, but as a token of his good opinion of his pupil.

Fortunately, he never found out about the bag of soot!