A celebration of the school stories of Frank Richards 1875-1961 written and introduced by John Chandos, with passages from The Magnet read by Hugh Burden, extracts from a conversation recorded by Frank Richards himself shortly before his death, and reminiscent comments by Professor Sir Denis Brogan and Dr. Ronald St. Blaize-Molony.

From the 'Magnet' by courtesy of Fleetway Publications
How does a myth come into being? The Myth of Greyiriars may answer part of the question, or it may leave it as unsolved as ever; but at least it will introduce listeners to the voice of a myth-maker-a boys' myth-maker - the late Frank Richards, the creator of Greyfriars, Mr. Quelch, Harry Wharton and the Famous Five, of the Bounder, Skinner and Coker, and, above all, of the paramount anti-hero, the greedy, cadging, deceitful, incorrigible William George Bunter.

These recordings, made only three months before his death in 1961 at the age of eighty-five, are, as far as I know, the only records of his voice in existence.
The first Greyfriars story appeared in the first issue of the Magnet in 1908, and from then until paper rationing put an end to the magazine in 1940, Frank Richards produced twenty-five thousand words of Greyfriars mythology every week.

During this time he remained in the shadows, an invisible creator except for the one occasion when he stepped into the limelight in person to cross words with George Orwell in their celebrated exchange of fire in the pages of Horizon. The persistence of the spell which Frank Richards somehow cast over his readers may be measured by the circumstance that, by 1927, the Magnet was carrying advertisements for the cure of baldness.

When, in 1965, the Fleetway Press published an edition of facsimile copies of the first issue of the Magnet, they disappeared virtually overnight, and a flood of letters appealing for more poured in from nostalgic men between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-five, from every quarter of the English reading world. (John Chandos)