George MacDonald Frasier made a career for himself writing the “Flashman” chronicles – a hilarious, if proudly un-PC series of historical fictions set around a thoroughgoing scoundrel who contrives to find himself in the thick of any number of more or less significant frays and who, despite the fact that he lacks nearly every single virtue in the Victorian gentleman’s portmanteau, nevertheless comes out every mess he made smelling far better than he deserved.
Honorable gentlemen might sigh on their deathbeds in regret of all those things they hadn’t done. It is sufficient to say that Frasier’s Flashman would suffer from no such pangs. And the interested reader could learn many things along the way – when he wasn’t coloring in a rogue, Frasier had an obvious love for history, especially the history of the British Empire.
The author died last week, but before he went he penned his own farewell to England. He was, to the last, unrepentantly incorrect.
Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.It comes in many guises, some of them so effective that the PC can be difficult to detect. The silly euphemisms, apparently harmless, but forever dripping to wear away common sense – the naivete of the phrase “a caring force for the future” on Remembrance poppy trays, which suggests that the army is some kind of peace corps, when in fact its true function is killing.
It goes on, and gets better. As Frasier himself, alas, will not. He will be missed.(H/T to occasional reader Cpt JMH, CF)
Darn! One of my favorites bites the dust.
I guess I’ll mosey on over to amaz0n and do a little shopping before the prices go up.
Natyasastra
“When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”"
Somewhere Kipling is buying Frasier a well-deserved round of drinks.
I’m not alone! I also will hit Amazon.
Why aren’t there more of these guys?
I’ve been half-listening to the politicians running for President and there ain’t one I’d follow around the corner let along vote for. (Well, maybe Fred Thomson).
I first came upon the Flashman books in Hong Kong of all places at the Drymark bookstore on the Peak. I love the series (Have read 4 so far).
Op-For offered the best tribute methinks:
“Let us commemorate his passing appropriately, as good old Flashy might have, although he wasn’t prone to that sort of thing. Still, pass a cigar and the brandy bottle, as Flashy demanded of Otto von Bismarck in Royal Flash. If you have a bearer or any other kind of servant, thrash him soundly. If you have a wench or dancing girl, give her a good solid rogering. “
Alas, none of the subsequent novels stood up to the first, an apt depiction of the disastrous Afghan campaign of, IIRC, 1848/9. In accordance with the quotation Lex offers, the best officers in the novels were invariably men of few and direct words. No nice phrases, no “policy” dictated by good will rather than good sense (as was the disastrous Afghan campaign), they had just enough of the snake oil in them to see that Flashman was nothing but snake oil. Think of Flashman’s encounter with MacDonald (again, IIRC) on the thin red line in Crimea, where the unrepentant coward Flashman was made to hold the line with everyone else against an apparently overwhelming Cossack charge, and witness for himself how the disciplined firepower of the British soldier broke the Cossacks. A pity that Flashman never made it to Rorke’s Drift, although he would have been in his 6os by then.
Zane – see “Flashman and the Tiger.”
One of my absolute favourite authors – an anti-CS Forester.
If you ever get your hands on a copy, try the McAuslan series, which I loved and read cover to cover flying Sydney to London.
Chris,
Yes, that was one of the better ones. As was the one that put him in the middle of the Sikh Rebellion, that was well-done. Still, there’s nothing in any of the later ones, save historical context, that wasn’t in the first one. I only wish I could come up with an idea like that…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hg3DNNrH1M&feature=related
Ah yes, Private McAuslan…He of the rusty bayonet and sloppy turnout, who still advanced to his front at El Alamein and routed the Hun**
“Ah’m Nae Dirty!!”
**very un-PC name for Germans
Zane – I meant Flashman and the Tiger is about Flashy at Isandlhwana and Rorkes Drift. But yes, I agree with you that the first was the best.
Chris, thanks, I’ll definitely look that one up now. Didn’t know Frasier had gotten that far.
I’m currently reading Fraser’s “Hollywood History of the World” and was thinking that I’d love to get his opinion on some of the movies released since he wrote the book about 10 years ago.
In addition to his Flashman and McAuslan books, I highly recommend his personal reminiscence of combat in Burma in WWII (“Quartered Safe Out Here”) and his history of the Border Reivers (“The Steel Bonnets”).
Damn, I will miss his work!
Roger that!