Posted on 07/07/2021 3:06:41 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Scoundrel, liar, cheat and toady, George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman is a creation of genius and a bracing antidote to our timid age
he brothers Hitchens famously did not agree on very much, but one matter that brought them into rare accord was the genius of the author George MacDonald Fraser and his character Flashman. Christopher wrote in 2008 that “I can remember the mingled shock and glee with which my radical friend Andrew Cockburn and I discovered … that we had both recently fallen for the same author and character. I have met that look, of the confirmed addict and fellow-sufferer, many times since.”
Peter, meanwhile, has called him “a genius of our time”, and said, “I have learned more history from MacDonald Fraser than from practically anyone else and I have enjoyed doing so”. He praised his Flashman books as “not only based on the cleverest conceit imaginable” but that “they fulfil the promise of the idea a thousandfold, full to the brim, pressed down and running over.”
There are certain historical novelists who create indelible protagonists who seem to grow in stature in every novel they appear in. Bernard Cornwell has Sharpe, Patrick O’Brian had Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin and CS Forester had Hornblower. So it is with MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman, who remains his greatest creation and took centre stage in a dozen books.
(Excerpt) Read more at thecritic.co.uk ...
There were three McAuslan books: The General Danced at Dawn, McAuslan in the Rough, and The Sheikh and the Dustbin. The three were collected as The Complete McAuslan.
Not only are they funny and not PC at all but they are the only historical fiction that is extensively footnoted. I prefer listening to them because tge reader is excellent. Most are based on historical events and settings. Even tge 9ne based sort of 9n the Prisoner of Zenda.
I have highly recommended this series for close to 20 years
He got both tge Congressional Medal of Honor but tge Confederate version as well.
Thanks ...
I read all of the Flashman novels. I think the quality dropped off with the last few, but most of them were great.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.