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 ...
I enjoyed Flashman in my younger years.
What odd timing. I just started the book. In with the Afghans now.
I also have read I don’t know how many of them. They were great fun.
We lived across the street from a public library in Hawaii for several years 1969-71. Being a stay-at-home Mom then, I made at least one visit a week. I read several of the Flashman novels. They were very entertaining and even funny in places. He was a “cad and a bounder”!
Flashman is utterly despicable. Cowers and hides, and then receives the V.C. for his bravery. But he finds himself in the middle of just about every important event in the second half of the 19th century. I learned a lot about some aspects of history that I was totally ignorant of. The mad queen of Madagascar comes to mind.
Totally UnPC—would make a wonderful period drama like Sharpe’s Rifles, but it will never happen. You’ll have to make the pictures in your head as you read them. Great reads and there are about 20 books, so if you enjoy them, there’s plenty more.
Fraser wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for:
The Three Musketeers (1973)
The Four Musketeers (1974)
Royal Flash (1975, adapted from his novel)
The Prince and the Pauper (1977)
Force 10 from Navarone (uncredited, 1978)
Octopussy (1983)
Red Sonja (1985)
The Return of the Musketeers (1989)
“Being a stay-at-home Mom then, I made at least one visit a week.”
so, being a terribly oppressed 70s Mom you found time to read? HAH!
This author was/is one of my all time favorites.
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/ronald-bassett/
aka William Clive
Ronald Leslie Bassett is a British writer and novelist. He wrote numerous works of historical fiction, sometimes under the pseudonym of “William Clive”. He received many awards for his medical and pharmaceutical writing.
Bkmk
Been a fan of George MacDonald Fraser since about 1974. I have copies of all of the Flashman books, and have read most of them more than once. I was really disappointed that Fraser died before publishing an account of Flashman’s activities in the U.S. Civil War; it would have been something, based on passing mentions elsewhere in the series.
Strictly speaking, Fraser did not create the character of Flashman, but took him from the book Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes. Fraser made Flashman his own, though. Great books.
—was first introduced to “Flashman” in Playboy—(I did read the articles, too)—
I also recommend his “straight history”, The Steel Bonnets (1971), a history of the Border Reivers of the Anglo-Scottish Border.
Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), a memoir of his experiences as an infantryman in the Border Regiment during the (hideous) Burma Campaign of World War II.
The Burma Campaign was a “Hell on Earth” operation, sometimes described as “Hand to Hand combat over an entire country”.
The British, with a reputation of excellent historians and biographers, were so traumatized by Burma that even today there are few “ground level” books on the subject.
Flashman (1969)
Royal Flash (1970)
Flashman's Lady (1977)
Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990)
Flash for Freedom! (1971)
Flashman on the March (2005)
Flashman and the Redskins (1982)
Flashman at the Charge (1973)
Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994)
Flashman and the Dragon (1985)
Flashman and the Tiger (1999)
If I were stranded on a desert island and could take the writings of only one author, George McDonald Fraser would be the one that I choose.
He has another great series about the "worst soldier in the British Army," Private McAuslan. He has some great histories about the British Borderers.
There is also one great satirical novel called "The Pyrates" ... it's a "history" about pirates but from the angle that Hollywood had it right about the great age of piracy in the Caribbean ...
“McAuslan In The Rough”
That’s one of the series ... I think there are at least three more. I have a book entitled “The Complete McAuslan”, which contains, I think, four books.
Yes, I was lucky and I knew it!
First of all, in 1968 my husband was just out of tech school and drew Hickam AFB instead of Viet Nam.
Second, we had found affordable housing close to a good school.
Third, I could be a Red Cross volunteer at Tripler Army Hospital every week. I got to spend some time with the troops.
I never wanted to try to have a career while we were raising our children.
“When all other trusts fail, turn to Flashman.” — Abraham Lincoln.
George MacDonald Fraser on ‘Desert Island Discs’ - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqPpgAo3hU
George MacDonald Fraser on ‘Desert Island Discs’ - Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rppT6E47Nvk
There was a Flashman movie, Royal Flash 1975. It was a disappointment to me. The Flashman role was meant for a Michael Caine or Roger Moore type, not Malcolm MacDowell.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639/
Damn you’re old! I enlisted in 67’. :)
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