William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards.

Time is frozen in the Greyfriars stories; although the reader sees the passing of the seasons, the characters' ages do not change and they remain in the same year groups.

Originally a minor character, Bunter's role was expanded over the years with his antics being heavily used in the stories for comic relief and to advance the plots.

Besides his gluttony, he is obtuse, lazy, racist, nosy, deceitful, pompous, and conceited, but he is blissfully unaware of his defects.

His vices are offset by several redeeming features, including a sporadic but genuine courage in aid of others; his ability to be generous during his rare occasions of prosperity; and above all his very real love and concern for his mother.

All these, along with Bunter's irrepressible optimism, and his comically transparent untruthfulness and inept attempts to conceal his antics from his schoolmasters and schoolfellows, combine to make the character highly entertaining, though hardly sympathetic.

His tight trousers against which boots and canes are constantly thudding, his astuteness in search of food, his postal order which never turns up, have made him famous wherever the Union Jack waves."

(Orwell 1940) In addition to stories set at Greyfriars School, he featured in many travel series, with trips to China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Hollywood and the South Seas.

In his first appearance, Billy Bunter was introduced thus: The newcomer was a somewhat stout junior, with a broad, pleasant face and an enormous pair of spectacles.

[7] On many levels, Bunter is deeply unattractive, amply displaying most of the seven deadly sins: pride, wrath, envy, sloth and, most especially, greed and gluttony (though sexual lust is absent in the innocent world of the stories).

However these traits are softened by his cheery optimism, his comically transparent untruthfulness and his reliable ineptitude when attempting to conceal his antics from his schoolfellows and schoolmasters.

Over the course of stories spanning several decades, Bunter's celebrated postal order almost never materialises; and the subject becomes a long-running cause of railery in the Greyfriars Remove.

Wealthier schoolboys such as Lord Mauleverer frequently part with a few shillings to be rid of Bunter; but even the notoriously tight-fisted American junior Fisher T. Fish is once persuaded to loan him cash.

He is obsessed with food – the sweeter and stickier, the better – and is compulsively helps himself to his schoolfellows' sweets, cakes and hampers, for which he earns countless kickings.

The support of the form divides equally between two candidates, leaving Bunter with the casting vote, which is keenly solicited by both camps.

"And—he's not reeking with money like Smithy, but, he's a jolly good deal easier to touch for a small loan when a fellow's been disappointed about a postal order," added Bunter thoughtfully.

In a series of stories in which Bunter unsuccessfully attempts, in turn, a physical exercise regime, hypnotism, and mind reading, a visiting ventriloquism show inspires him to believe himself a born ventriloquist.

This is seen in several stories, usually involving his mother falling ill, which draws out Bunter's unselfish side (Magnet Nos.

From the mid-1920s, as Hamilton increasingly developed Bunter's comic potential, he also began to use his antics to initiate and drive forward the plots.

[14] In "The Secret Seven" series of 1934, the entire plotline is initiated by Bunter's stupidity, which causes a road accident that sends a number of leading characters to the hospital.

Stronger characters such as Remove Captain Harry Wharton, the hard and rebellious Herbert Vernon-Smith, and Fifth form duffer Horace Coker are frequently given leading roles in their own series; and even lesser characters such as American junior Fisher T. Fish and aspiring actor William Wibley would occasionally be brought to the fore in their own series.

[20] Being a freeborn republican and democrat, and a firm believer in liberty, equality, and fraternity, Fishy might have been expected to extend the hand of friendship to the black man from Africa.

A notable example is Billy Bunter's fellow form member Fisher T. Fish, the son of a New York businessman, whose moneylending frequently brings him into conflict with the school authorities and who, on occasion, displays racist behaviour.

By contrast, Billy is particularly close to his mother, Mrs Amelia Bunter, a kindly lady who appears only briefly in seven stories.

In fact, this turns out to be the modest Bunter Villa in Surrey, with a maid, a cook and a single Ford car.

Although he had written many thousands of stories between 1900 and 1940 for the Amalgamated Press, he had used dozens of pen names, and was himself unknown prior to the newspaper article.

Hamilton was at first prevented from continuing the Greyfriars saga, as the Amalgamated Press claimed exclusive rights to all the characters except Billy Bunter, who did appear in a Sparshott story in 1946.

[31] In the 1990s, a series of 15-minute dramas adapted from Charles Hamilton's novels were performed by The Goodies (Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor) for BBC radio.

[34] The series also featured Anthony Valentine as Harry Wharton, Michael Crawford as Frank Nugent, Jeremy Bulloch as Bob Cherry, Melvyn Hayes as Harold Skinner, John Woodnutt, Raf De La Torre, Kynaston Reeves and Jack Melford as Mr Quelch, Roger Delgado as Monsieur Charpentier and Kenneth Cope as school bully Gerald Loder.

Bunter thus became one of the house characters of that comic and its successors, and so continued appearing in anthology-style collections in Dutch until the end of the 20th century.