Plenty of novels are set in the past, but few achieve what Fraser has throughout the Papers. Aside from the series’ blatant (although often comedic and satirical) racism, Flashman is perhaps the least politically correct character to have been written within the last century.

Fraser pulls no punches in his depiction. There’s little doubt that Flashman is on the verge of cancellation, if he hasn’t been pushed off that particular cliff already. These are the things I wish to discuss here. What makes the series so brilliant is, in actuality, its historical basis, and its superb writing. Readers of this blog might be most familiar with Sandy Mitchell’s Ciaphas Cain series, which is an adaptation of Flashman into the 41st Millennium.Īlthough a brilliant grounding principle for a series of military literature, The Papers is sold in its execution. This conceit has been much-plagiarized since the release of Flashman in the 1960s. Harry Flashman himself is a lying, bullying, toadying, lecherous poltroon, who, by virtue of cowardice and good luck, emerges from each adventure looking like a hero–which only brings about more trouble in the end. His books are hilarious, compelling, and infinitely exciting.įraser’s intention was to capture–in a readable modern style–the realities of British colonialism, not just in action, but in thought and speech. Now I’m finally done, and I can report that Fraser was perhaps the finest novelist of the 20th century.

I’ve been slowly making my way through all twelve of the Flashman books for the last two and a half years. Through Flashman’s eyes Fraser explores all of Victorian military history, from the Kabul Retreat to the Boer War. The Flashman Papers are his purported memoirs. It turned out that, after being expelled from Rugby School in the late 1830s, Flashman had joined the 11th Hussars and gone on to become one of England’s most decorated war heroes. Between the late ’60s and early ’00s, British historian, newspaper man, and WWII veteran George Macdonald Fraser wrote and published a series of eleven novels and one short story anthology following the military exploits of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the infamous bully from 1857 English classic novel Tom Brown’s School Days.

The flashman