Yaroooh and huzzah! More than a century after his birth, Billy Bunter has managed to avoid type-two diabetes and osteoarthritis to jump back into action in the Indian market where the Frank Richards books had been missing for a long time.
Hachette India has reintroduced the popular series that started its journey in 1908. What can be more fun than finding Bunter bellow and chortle?
“The books just naturally petered out in the late 70s/ early 80s from being both dated and in today’s context, politically incorrect,” Hachette India’s managing director, Thomas Abraham, told The Telegraph.
“So, while the main characters themselves are not racist, the mores of the time mean that the storylines or adventures have colonial settings and in some cases stereotypical racial depictions. They have thus been brought back not as children’s books but purely for the adult nostalgia market. The books state that clearly. Having said that, for the adult market that grew up on them, they still have a pull, being the original children’s adventure series combining at once school fun, mystery and adventure and, most of all, humour.”
Billy Bunter as depicted by The Magnet artist CH Chapman Sourced by The Telegraph
Political correctness is chasing many iconic authors and their creations that generations of Indian children grew up on. One of them is P.G. Wodehouse, with a publishing house editing several Jeeves and Wooster books to remove “unacceptable” prose. Passages have been removed or reworked in new editions of Right Ho, Jeeves and Thank You, Jeeves, both released in 1934.
Some Agatha Christie novels have been cleansed of potentially offensive language, including references to ethnicity. Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and Roald Dahl’s books have been “updated”, too.
Bunter, at one point, was the most famous schoolboy in English juvenile fiction. Created by Charles Hamilton, using the pen name Frank Richards, the stories are set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent. They were originally published in the boys’ weekly story paper The Magnet.
Keeping Bunter — introduced as “a somewhat stout junior, with a broad, pleasant face and an enormous pair of spectacles” — company are Harry Wharton, head boy of the Lower Fourth (known as the Remove), Bob Cherry, Frank Nugent, Johnny Bull and the Indian prince Hurree Jamset Ram Singh or the Nabob of Bhainpur. They make up the Famous Five (not to be confused with Enid Blyton’s creation).
After The Magnet became a casualty of wartime paper shortages, Bunter emerged in school blazer, checked pants and bowtie as a television star in the 1950s and 60s.
Abraham thinks the Bunter books will now havea pull among the 50-plusaudience.
“No, there’s no demand whatsoever from today’s children’s segment but, like I said, these were brought back for the adult nostalgia market,” he said.
“These reissues (on demand from Bengaluru booksellers) were thus done purely as a print-on-demand revival for diehard fans. They are collectables. The entire Cassell series (38 books) has been reissued alongside some rarities from The Magnet magazine that have also been collected in book form.”
The Greyfriars characters are too good to lose. Some readers have had Bunter collections for decades and many of the books could be in poor shape. Here’s a chance to reboot and let Bunter waddle into your home and heart.
