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Flashman: A Novel, by George MacDonald Fraser
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If ever there was a time when I felt that 'watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet' stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman."– P.G. Wodehouse
Fraser revives Flashman, a caddish bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, and relates Flashman’s adventures after he is expelled in drunken disgrace from Rugby school in the late 1830s. Flashy enlists in the Eleventh Light Dragoons and is promptly sent to India and Afghanistan, where despite his consistently cowardly behavior he always manages to come out on top. Flashman is an incorrigible anti-hero for the ages. This humorous adventure book will appeal to fans of historical fiction, military fiction, and British history as well as to fans of Clive Cussler, James Bond, and The Three Musketeers.
Flashman is the first book of the famous “Flashman Papers” series.
- Sales Rank: #91413 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-02-26
- Released on: 2013-02-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
'Flashman is a wonderful creation, by a master storyteller. We'll forever delight in his evil antics' JEFFREY ARCHER 'Politically incorrect, lascivious and fiendishly handsome, Flashman is the greatest ' BORIS JOHNSON 'Flashman is one of the great characters of modern fiction; a rogue, a lover, and always an irresistible read' BERNARD CORNWELL 'Flashman, Sherlock Holmes, Toad of Toad Hall, Bertie Wooster. Any writer would give his eye-teeth to have created a character as good as those. GMF was one of the greats' CONN IGGULDEN 'The perfect fictional creation' TONY PARSONS 'A first-rate historical novelist' KINGSLEY AMIS
About the Author
The author of the famous Flashman Papers and the Private McAuslan stories, George MacDonald Fraser has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he has also written numeous films, most notably The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond film, Octopussy . George Macdonald Fraser died in January 2008 at the age of 82.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
‘Don’t wait to die on the field of honour. Heroes draw no higher wages than the others.’ – soldier of fortune Paolo di Avitabile in Flashman
Just before World War I, Mark Franklin, the hero of George MacDonald Fraser’s Mr American, travels to London, where he spends a bibulous evening with an elderly military man by the name of Sir Harry Paget Flashman. ‘He had looked Sir Harry up in Who’s Who and read incredulously through the succinct list of campaigns and decorations – that gnarled old man sleeping there had seen Custer ride into the broken bluffs above the Little Big Horn, and fought hand to hand with Afghan tribesmen more than seventy years ago; he had ridden into the guns at Balaclava and seen the ranks form for Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg; he had known Wellington and Lincoln . . .’
Who wouldn’t be incredulous? Sir Harry’s numerous honors include not only England’s Victoria Cross, but also the French Legion of Honour and the American Congressional Medal of Honor. His Who’s Who entry – should you ever happen upon it – requires four inches of small type just to list some of his nearly unbelievable exploits. During the course of a long life, Sir Harry Paget Flashman (1822–1915) served as a political adviser to Chancellor Bismarck on the Schleswig-Holstein question, briefly functioned as chief of staff to the Rajah of Sarawak, rode with both John Brown and Jeb Stuart, and even assisted the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico as an aide-decamp. Over the years this far-ranging traveler also spent some time as a buffalo hunter, western scout, Australian prospector, ‘reluctant deputy marshal to J. B. Hickok, Esq.,’ and native interpreter – Sir Harry spoke nine languages fluently and could ‘rub along’ in another dozen or so.
Naturally, Who’s Who – with British discretion – barely hints that Harry Flashman frequently spied for Her Majesty’s government and that he was mixed up in both the African slave trade and the Underground Railroad. Moreover, through a run of astonishing bad luck, the man seems to have landed smack in the middle of virtually every major battle or civil insurrection of the nineteenth century – the Siege of Gandamack in Afghanistan, the Zulu attack at Rorke’s Drift, the rising of the Mahdi at Khartoum, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Peking Rebellion of 1900. During the American Civil War he even inexplicably managed to serve as a major in the Union forces and a colonel in the army of the Confederacy.
As it happens, when Mr Franklin met Sir Harry the then 92- year-old general had recently completed his personal memoirs, memoirs so disturbing that after his death they were quickly sealed and, it would appear, instantly forgotten. Indeed, the memory of Sir Harry himself gradually faded away, so that otherwise reliable histories of the Victorian era failed to assign him even a footnote. But, then, in 1965 during a sale of household furniture at Ashby in Leicestershire, the manuscript miraculously resurfaced. Ably edited by George MacDonald Fraser, the so-called Flashman Papers were eventually published in twelve volumes, each ‘packet’ focusing on one or more episodes from their author’s martial career. They begin with the teenaged Flashman’s expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness – an incident mentioned in Thomas Hughes’s almost libelous Tom Brown’s School Days – and follow him up to the unpleasantness, very late in his life, with Colonel Sebastian ‘Tiger Jack’ Moran. That last name may be familiar, as Moran was once described by the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes as ‘the second most dangerous man in London’ and ‘the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced’.
But, really, what impropriety in these reminiscences could have offended the sensibilities of the Flashman family? The author was the most upright of eminent Victorians, the recipient of the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth, the honorary president of the Mission for the Reclamation of Reduced Females, and the former governor of his alma mater, that bastion of muscular Christianity, Rugby School. Perhaps Sir Harry’s family, in particular his clerical son, the Reverend
Bishop Harry Albert Victor Flashman, simply felt it wiser for posterity to honor a public career already well documented in Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life and ’Twixt Cossack and Cannon. Yet time has not been kind to these stiffly official memoirs. They are as forgotten now as if they had never existed, while great scholars and common readers alike return regularly to the Flashman Papers for instruction and delight. And, it goes without saying, for the irresistible brazen effrontery of the man himself. For in these memoirs, Sir Harry Flashman, the supposed Victorian equivalent of a ‘parfit gentil knyght,’ reveals himself to be – in his own words – ‘a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward – and, oh yes, a toady.’
In fact, Flashman is one of the world’s most entertaining and beguiling rogues. He pursues life’s pleasures with Casanovian gusto, regularly employs the colorful language of the barracks, and knows that ‘there isn’t any folly a man won’t contemplate if there’s money or a woman at stake.’ With his gallant sidewhiskers, bold dark eyes with hooded lids, and strong, aquiline nose, this charming dastard – fourteen stone of sheer manliness – regularly seduces schoolgirls and queens, hides or runs away when fights break out, and manages, through deception and utter poltroonery, to survive when better men die. As he says (in Royal Flash): ‘The ideal time to be a hero is when the battle is over and the other fellows are dead, God rest ’em, and you take the credit.’
The three startling, even shocking adventures reprinted in this Everyman omnibus provide the ideal introduction to Sir Harry’s rumbustious life. In Flashman the youthful anti-hero spends his last day at Rugby, enlists in the army, captures the heart (and body) of the fair-haired Elspeth, and reluctantly embarks on a mission to mountainous, war-torn Afghanistan. In Flash for Freedom! the luckless Flashy joins the crew of an African slave ship, unwillingly assists the Underground Railroad, and fortuitously meets a rising young American politician named Abraham Lincoln. (In later years, Lincoln was known to say: ‘When all other trusts fail, turn to Flashman.’ I believe that the word ‘all’ should be emphasized.) Finally, Flashman in the Great Game takes our man into the world of Kim, as he spies for the British, dallies with a luscious maharani, and desperately struggles to survive the blood-baths of the Sepoy Mutiny.
That he does so will hardly come as a surprise, nor that he emerges from his Indian nightmare not only alive but also elevated to a knighthood. Nevertheless, a few crudely unimaginative critics have suggested that nobody could actually have escaped from so many deadly ambushes and battles. Two or three have even gone so far as to speculate that George Mac-DonaldFraser is the author, not the editor, of the Flashman Papers, with the deeply cynical implication that Flashman himself is merely a character in a series of clever novels. Sigh. What can you expect these days from cloistered academics, none of whom is even half as alive as Flashman? Flashy may not be as admirable as, say, Don Quixote, Lord Greystoke or Sherlock Holmes, but he’s certainly just as real.
Most helpful customer reviews
218 of 223 people found the following review helpful.
The first in this famous series, and still the best.
By A Customer
It is hard to believe that this first book of the Flashman series is now nearly 30 years old. Written as if it is an actual published memoir (later books put "a novel" on the cover, probably to protect the publisher from receiving annoying letters of shock and outrage from the truly ignorant and profoundly clueless). This is a book for lovers of historical fiction, military fiction, or British history, but will be enjoyed by those who otherwise would never read in these areas. They are books of humor, following a knave and poltroon -- Harry Flashman -- as he stumbles into many of the great events of the 19th century (often fleeing irate husbands). Events he has visted so far include Little Big Horn, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion, the Indian Mutiny, the American slave trade, and the Prussian court where he was forced to act as a royal imposter. To the world he is seen as a great heroic figure, a development that Flashman finds hilarious yet endlessly useful. This first book introduces the Flashman character, beginning with his being expelled from school, forced into the British Army, and suddenly finding himself in the midst of the disasterous British Afghan campaign. The only books that ever left me laughing harder were the original three books of what should have remained the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. Highly recommended, though with this warning: reading this book and its successors will leave you considerably more educated about the important events of the last century without you even realizing it is happening
190 of 195 people found the following review helpful.
Everything I need to know I learned from Flashman
By John DiBello
I discovered and read George MacDonald Fraser's masterful "Flashman" series in my teens (I'm now crouching this side of forty), at the same time I first read Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
From Bond I've learned how to play baccarat, how to pull an Aston Martin out of a skid, and how to climb through a tunnel of scorching hot metal.
I have never in my life had to do any of these things.
On the other hand, from Flashman I've learned lessons I use every day of my life:
* When the trouble starts, keep your head down, or better yet, in a totally different country.
* Never be afraid to accept credit for something good you did. That goes double for something good you didn't.
* Never volunteer.
* Wine, women, and song? To hell with the song.
* There's no shame in living as a coward. Beats dying as a hero.
* Always have an escape plan. If not, steal someone else's.
Game, set, match: Flashy.
81 of 83 people found the following review helpful.
Flashy's Strange Appeal
By A Customer
The Flashman papers - the memoirs of the fictional 19th century British officer Harry Paget Flashman - are the product of George MacDonald Fraser's fertile imagination. If they had really been found in a Leicester saleroom in 1965, as Fraser tells us in the preface of the first Flashman book, their discovery would have been as serendipitous as the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii. These books are really special, and it's a pity that more people don't know about them.
The first of eleven books in the series, Flashman: From the Flashman papers, 1839-1842 recounts Harry Paget Flashman's adventures as a young adult, primarily his participation in the First Afghan War. The book presents certain thematic elements that recur delightfully throughout the series: Flashman's propensity for finding himself at the center of major historical events, brushing shoulders with important historical figures like the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria; his uncanny luck in getting out of the stickiest situations imaginable while getting credit for heroic deeds not his own; and his unbridled hedonism.
Flashman is a talented equestrian and linguist. His positive characteristics end there. By any objective measure he is a deplorable human being. Flashman is a coward, a lecher, and a libertine; and yet, oddly, most readers will wind up liking him. Some have compared him to James Bond, but that would be an insult to 007, who was after all a decent guy.
This contradiction is hard to explain. How can we like a guy who has a deplorable character and yet always seems to come out on top? Perhaps he appeals to the irresponsible freedom-loving id in all of us. There is a part of us that envies someone who can sin often, get away with it, and never feel burdened by a guilty conscience. Flashman is a scoundrel and knows he's a scoundrel; it just doesn't bother him. We feel privileged to be let in on the secret, for while some of the book's characters recognize Flashman's true nature, most do not. And Fraser makes an art of killing off the characters that have the most damaging information on Flashman before they get a chance to expose his treachery. Near the end of the book, we can only chuckle when a young Queen Victoria, filled with emotion, gushes to Flashman, "You are a very gallant gentleman. God bless you," as she pins a medal on his coat in recognition of his "service" to England in the Afghan campaign.
As you follow Flashman's every move, devouring this action-packed adventure like ice cream, reveling in its bawdy humor and ironic twists and turns, you'll realize that this is very high quality stuff. Flashman is an extremely well-written piece of historical fiction. The eloquent narration fits with what one might expect from a memoir by a 19th century officer in her Majesty's service. The British retreat from Kabul in early 1842, which is recounted in all its gruesome detail, really did happen as described in the book, with men, women, and children savagely hacked to pieces by Afghani tribes. And true to form, Fraser does justice to the book's many historical figures, who at least in spirit are similar to the real life personalities.
Flashman is a great book that can be seen on many different levels: comic adventure story; commentary on Victorian life; or historical fiction. In the end, no matter how one chooses to view Flashman, there is no denying the entertainment value of this book, which is unparalleled, unless compared to some of the other books in the Flashman series (i.e. Flash at the Charge or Flash for Freedom). One word of caution: given Flashman's offensive views on race and gender, you can throw political correctness out the window with this one.
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