Education: Forever Bunter

Of all the public schoolboys in Britain —not even excluding Tom Brown—none is better known or more persistent than Billy Bunter of Greyfriars. A round, owlish fellow, he is forever stealing other chaps' "tuck" (cakes, cream puffs, tarts, toffee). He is hopeless at athletics, can't seem to spell ("I wood have toled you myself but you wood not lissen . . ."), is perpetually in a "digamma," and is constantly delivering such Bunterisms as "How sharper than a thankless child it is to have a toothless "serpent."

Billy Bunter is always in trouble: he is "whopped" ("Wow! Oh! Oh. crumbs! Wow!"), smacked...