He recalled how his rifle section took the news of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: 'Ey, Grandarse, 'ear w'at they're sayin' on't wireless? The Yanks 'ave dropped a bomb the size of a pencil on Tokyo an' it's blown the whole f**kin' place tae bits!' He knew exactly how soldiers, and especially Cumbrian soldiers, talk. Long before he became a famous writer of fiction, he was able to bottle up remarkable personal experiences of what war is like at the sharp end. This is the first important thing worth knowing about George Fraser. 'He was going like Jesse Owens, screaming his head off, right across my front: I just had sense enough to take a split second, traversing my aim with him before I fired he gave a convulsive leap, and I felt that jolt of delight - I'd hit the bastard! - and as he fell on all fours the Highland officer with whom I'd played football dived on him from behind, slashing at his head with a kukri.' Here is a typical Fraser account of a skirmish south of Meiktila: 'I turned to see a Jap racing across in front of the bunker, a sword flourished above his head. His account of that experience, Quartered Safe Out Here, is perhaps the best private soldier's memoir of World War II. He cherished the area and its people all his life, and retained perfect mastery of its dialect.Įarly in 1945, he found himself marching into Burma with the Border Regiment, in General Slim's legendary XIVth Army. George - I was lucky enough to know and love him - came from a Scottish family, but was born in Cumbria, near Carlisle, in 1925. So well did he spin those yarns that some people today suppose Flashman was a real historical character. His creator, George Fraser himself, likewise finished a remarkable career wealthy and vastly popular for better reasons, having given pleasure to millions of readers all over the world. He ends up as General Sir Harry Flashman, VC, rich and famous. His novels - Flashman, Royal Flash, Flashman At The Charge and the rest - engage his anti-hero in great military adventures of the Victorian era: the Afghan war, Charge of the Light Brigade, Indian Mutiny, Zulu War.Įach book describes how Flashman, though a liar, coward and charlatan, emerges laden with ill-deserved honours and glory.

George grasped a simple, ironic truth about life: the stinkers usually come out on top. 'I knew better than to mix my drinks, even at seventeen.'įraser's stroke of genius was to seize upon Flashman, villainous bully of the priggish Victorian novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, written by Thomas Hughes, and make him the anti-hero of a dozen books of his own.

Flashman by george macdonald fraser