Posted on 01/03/2008 6:04:17 AM PST by the scotsman
The novelist George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman adventure stories, has died aged 82, his publisher has said.
The popular books saw womanising anti-hero Sir Harry Flashman, fight his way around the British Empire.
MacDonald Fraser, who was appointed an OBE in 1999, also wrote the screenplay for James Bond film Octopussy.
The Carlisle-born journalist turned author, who lived on the Isle of Man, had fought cancer for several years. He was married and had three children.
MacDonald Fraser served as a soldier in Burma and India during World War II and later rose to be deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald newspaper.
He was still working there when the first Flashman book was published in 1969.
A further 11 followed, the last in 2005.
The inspiration for Sir Harry Flashman came from the 19th century novel, Tom Brown's Schooldays, where the character features as the cowardly bully who torments the hero, Tom.
George MacDonald Fraser wrote 11 Flashman novels
MacDonald Fraser based his tales on the idea that Flashman's "memoirs" had been unearthed in an old trunk in a Leicestershire auction room.
Despite being a vain, cowardly rogue, as well as a racist and a sexist, the character managed to play a pivotal role in many of the 19th Century's most significant events, always emerging covered in glory.
As well as Octopussy in 1983, MacDonald Fraser wrote other screenplays including The Prince and The Pauper and The Three Musketeers.
Fellow author Kingsley Amis called him "a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist". '
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Rest in peace, sir, and know that you will always be honored by those of us who enjoy a ripping good yarn.
Now I am going to have to go out and get Flashie’s books out of the library. They are a fun read, and give you a little history along the way. Of course, you have to be mindful of the fact that a little over half of what you learn will be wrong.
This is a great loss. I’m the only woman I know who loved the Flashman series, and I always hoped Fraser could pull himself together to write a last great book more about Sir Harry in the War Between the States. But the research he did was so vast that it’s easy to see why he wouldn’t do it.
I’m not so sure “Octopussy” is a standout resume bullet.
—great series of books—I re-read them every couple of years—
re:He was still working there when the first Flashman book was published in 1969. ... A further 11 followed, the last in 2005. ... George MacDonald Fraser wrote 11 Flashman novels...
So, which is it, 11 or 12 books... /grin
The article failed to mention that Fraser was the screenwriter on Richard Lester's superb film adaptation of The Three Musketeers (released in two parts) in the mid-70's. I think that was the first time I heard of Fraser, and his screenplay was a notable contribution to the film. Lester and Fraser later collaborated on a film of Fraser's own Royal Flash. I think I am one of the few Flashman fans who liked that film (though the novel was one of the weakest in the series, IMO). R.I.P. GMF.
“MacDonald Fraser served as a soldier in Burma and India during World War II and later rose to be deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald newspaper. “
Pick up his war memoirs, “Quartered Safe Out Here” for an interesting read.
“You may talk of gin and beer
“When you’re quartered safe out here
“An’ you’re sent to penny fights an’ Aldershot it
“But when it comes to slaughter
“You will do your work on water
“An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it
~Kipling (Gunga Din)
Also unmentioned: Fraser wrote a superb history book on the Scots Border (not Highland) clans, and he occasionally contributed to National Review.
R.I.P. Mr. Fraser. Thank you for many enjoyable hours with the cad and bounder you created and guided through the heyday of the British Empire. I hope when I meet you on the other side you will finally have Flashman’s American Civil War memoirs completed.
But have you read Fraser's MacAuslan books? "Play up, play up, and git tore in!" "That's a right Catholic question, yon" "Private Piltdown himself" "Foul trolls from the dark ages had dug that bunker" "Mah spurs gae jingle jangle jingle, sae they do . . . "
Also, his history of the Borders, The Steel Bonnets is splendid.
Rest in peace, sir, you will be sorely missed.
The preface of that book alone is worth the price of admission!
Thanks for the clarification! It was a really entertaining character and book series. There should have been several good movies derived from it, if only Hollywood could take their heads out of their... /grin
Add me to your Chicks Who Dig Flashy list!
Checked your past posts. Yes, we’re on the same page about a lot of things. Doesn’t surprise me that you two ladies like Flashy!
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2006&base_name=post_1233
BUSH AND THE FLASHMAN. To me, the strangest thing about the president’s summer reading list is not its heft, nor its inclusion of heavyweight history and existential literature, but the indication that the President is working his way through the Flashman series, by George MacDonald Fraser. And no, I don’t mean it’s odd because Sir Harry Flashman is a coward, a liar, a drunk, and a bully; nor is it odd because Flashman is more than willing to let his countrymen die to save his reputation.
It’s somewhat surprising because Fraser is a violent opponent of the Iraq War and of the president’s foreign policy. Fraser, an octogenarian Scot, a Tory, and a veteran of HM armed forces, could be heard this year on BBC Radio 4 explaining that “[h]e had never in his life felt more ashamed of his country than he had over Iraq.... He could not get out of his head two pictures, one of a small Iraqi boy with his arms blown off by American bombs, and another of our prime minister smirking sycophantically at President Bush’s side.” Fraser rates Iraq as “The foulest war crime that this country has ever perpetrated.”
But as I say, that makes the choice only somewhat surprising; if the president stayed away from all contemporary authors who oppose his Iraq policy, he’d obviously have slim pickings. What makes it most peculiar is that Fraser thinks the Flashman books themselves — which feature politicians indifferent to the consequences of their policies and reporters so keen for good stories that they somehow confuse the raping, murdering, craven, but undeniably charming Flashman for a hero — provide a basis for opposing the Iraq War. As he writes in a preface to the most recent volume, Flashman on the March, when the British Empire went off to fight a bloody war against a cut-rate tyrant (in this case, in Abyssinia), it did so without “messianic rhetoric. There were no false excuses, no deceits, no cover-ups or lies....” And even with those virtues, it still made errors that called the whole enterprise into question.
“There’s bound to be an outcry because we’re not leaving a garrison to pacify the tribes and police the country,” laments one officer about British domestic opinion. “As though Abyssinia were a country to be pacified and ruled with fewer than ten divisions and a great civil power!”... MacDonald allows in a footnote ... that “the brief exchanges among Napier’s staff have echoes which continue to be heard today.... Britain’s leaving Abyssinia did not become her as well as her manner of entering it.”
What will the president think when he hears those echoes? (If, of course, he keeps reading Flashman.) Whatever the bad doings of the British empire’s leaders, its soldiers — in Fraser’s versions — almost always acquit themselves well, except for Flashman, who treats war as the occasion for larking about in uniform and winking at the girls. His only real virtue, which can neither balance out his utter irresponsibility nor fill the vacuum where his moral sense should be, is his brutal candor about his bad deeds and worse character when pressed to tell his own story.
—Eric Rauchway
heavens, i loved flashman, too! i’m sure many women do.
WIFE-O-BUCKHEAD
Pick up his war memoirs, “Quartered Safe Out Here” for an interesting read.
I'll second that recommendation. Terrific read, plus it was the first time I'd ever heard of General Slim, who many consider the single best military commander in WWII.
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