Billy Bunter's Double

Billy Bunter #16

by Frank Richards

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Pseudonym of author Charles Hamilton, who created Billy Bunter and who also used plenty of other pseudonyms.

Those other pseudonyms were, in alphabetical order:
Winston Cardew; Martin Clifford; Harry Clifton; Clifford Clive; Sir Alan Cobham; Owen Conquest; Gordon Conway; Freeman Fox; Hamilton Greening; Cecil Herbert; Prosper Howard; Robert Jennings; Gillingham Jones; T Harcourt Llewelyn; Clifford Owen; Ralph Redway; Hilda Richards; Raleigh Robbins; Robert Rogers; Eric Stanhope; Robert Stanley; Nigel Wallace; Talbot Wynyard.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Pure joy' is how I would describe my emotions when reading this book. Nothing brings me greater pleasure then reading about billy and Wally Bunter squarking at each other, than being able to tell exactly how the plots going to go from chapter one, from reading about the loveable chums of the remove who behave exactly how you expect them to. This is what reading is all about.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Those planning to research the thoughts and philosophy of Boris Johnson may be tempted in the direction of those great pillars of Conservative thought, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France or Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. I suggest that they save these for retrospectives on Hague or Thatcher and maybe even Major. Those wishing to understand the current pm would find more fertile ground here*. Bunter is just the sort of public schoolboy Johnson must have been; self-serving, endowed with an overblown sense of entitlement, present focussed, greedy and dishonest. Someone who continually tries to get away with it. A thoroughly unpleasant character, a gift to comedy and unjustly popular.

To add to the Johnson myth, there is a belief that our leader is actually some sort of a genius beneath his bumbling exterior and here we have a tale of mistaken identity with Bunter swapping places with his affable, able and intelligent cousin. I personally think that if Johnson was clever we would have seen some evidence of it by now. Our premier is the odious William George Bunter and not the more amiable Walter Gilbert Bunter. As Johnson has said himself that “beneath the exterior of a blithering idiot may be a blithering idiot!

The book itself is surprisingly well plotted. Credit where credit is due. However, it grates as books of the period often do. The one Asian character is there to (largely) be laughed at; the joke being his stereotyped use of language. To be fair, it is essentially the same joke that has recently proved so popular with the character of Raj in The Big Bang Theory, so perhaps we can forgive, but I think not. The school itself runs on hierarchies and bullying (more for Johnson’s biographer).

Having said that, it was an enjoyable read. Richards (Charles Hamilton) can write.

* For further reading into the ways of the prime minister’s mind I strongly suggest Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time where you will meet the dreadful Kenneth Widmerpool. A Boris Johnson double if ever there was one.

[Goutam Choudhury]

Fuck you...you haven't even provided the book yet want a 'review: in advance...low motherfucking creatures...

[Peter Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hoot!