Dinah Hunter

Dinah Hunter (formerly Dinah Mary Glass) is one of the main characters of both the Demon Headmaster books and the CBBC hit 1990's Television series.

She is a member of Splat! who work together to investigate and foil their former Headmaster's evil plans fo world dominatio

Personality
Dinah is extremely clever for her age particularly when it comes to maths and science. She is quite shy at the beginning, She finds it hard to fit in with her foster brother's Lloyd and Harvey (especially Lloyd) to begin with but after she helps them get rid of the Headmaster she is accepted by them and they persuade their parents to adopt Dinah properly. Dinah becomes a valuable member of SPLAT and her intelligence helps them out of tight spots more than once.

Skills
Dinah is a very smart young woman who hides her intelligence from others as she hates the attention, wants to be ordinary and be able to do her own things without being bothered. When she first meets the Headmaster she is asked to fill out a test to see how smart she is, however she messes up it on purpose to hide how smart she really is. She is caught out though by the Headmaster when she does some of Harvey's particularly hard punishment sums (set by the Prefects) that were just a test from the headmaster to see how good she was.

Unlike the rest of Splat! Dinah can be hypnotised and so can be controlled by the Headmaster.

Prior to the series
Not much is known about Dinah's life before she first appears within the series. We know from several quotes (see above) that Dinah was around one year old when her mum and dad, Sally and Steve Glass, were killed at the age of twenty four. Dinah was sent to an unnamed children's home that we know little about. At the age of Eleven Dinah is in the process of being adopted by Hunter family.

Dinah first talks about her birth parents in the first book when she introduces herself after she goes to the games room with the boys shortly after arriving at the hunters house for the first time:

"My name is Dinah Glass. I'm eleven. My mother and father died when I was one. I've lived in the children's home for ten years"

- Dinah Glass, The Demon Headmaster

In Facing the Demon Headmaster when Dinah is talking to Phil Ashby (who she thinks at the time is her father due to the manipulations of the headmaster), Dinah starts telling him about her parents:

"She starts murmuring again. "What comes into mind if I say Stephan Glass? Do you recognize the name? Steve Glass? Stephen and Sally. Sally and Steve. Is that familiar? Married when they were both twenty-four. And then they there was a baby daughter. Dinah. Dinah Mary Glass"

- Dinah Glass, Facing the Demon Headmaster

The Demon Headmaster
We first meet Dinah at the start of the first book as she is being driven by her social worker, Miss Wilberforce, to meet the Hunter family for the first time. She moves in with the Hunter family and starts going to the same school, St Champions, as her foster brothers Lloyd and Harvey. It is not easy, as they seem to hate her, and school is really strange.

The Pupils displays weird behaviour like talking like robots and standing in study circles answering question instead of running around the playground. The prefects come out and order the students to form lines, Dinah, not knowing what to do, joins the nearest line but is soon picked out by Rose who questions her on why she's not wearing the correct green uniform, Dinah explains that she's new and didn't have the correct uniform and is sent to the headmasters office.

2019 series
Dinah is mentioned in the "The Demon Headmaster (2019 TV series)" episode "Be Your True Self", where the new group of children visit a spooky old school where there is a picture of a scary looking Headmaster and find a note from "Dinah Hunter" saying it's happened again.

She subsequently returns in the next episode, infiltrating the school posing as a new teacher so that she can contact the new group of children resisting the headmaster. She claimed to be working for MI6, and attempts to trap the Headmaster with a bomb and a holographic recreation of herself, but was forced to sacrifice herself to the Headmaster to save the children.

The Headmaster attempted to use her contacts to support his bid to get put in charge of the Department of Education, but the plan was exposed and thwarted by the children, who also broke his control over Dinah. This final confrontation also revealed that the 'new' Headmaster was actually in some way subordinate to the original Headmaster, who appeared as a hologram of himself to hypnotise his 'successor' to stand down.