Farewell George MacDonald Fraser

[Nono]

George MacDonald Fraser | Economist.com

George MacDonald Fraser, inventor of Flashman, died on January 2nd, aged 82 HARRY FLASHMAN never knew George MacDonald Fraser. That was a pity, because Mr Fraser knew every scrap about Flashman, from the points of his swaggering moustaches to the tips of his gleaming spurs. He knew him as a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward and, not least, a toady, ever able to make himself shine in the eyes of his braying superiors. And he revelled in him as perhaps the finest fictional rogue ever to grace the map of the British empire. Mr Fraser had known him from the start of his career, when he was dragged bragging and hiccupping from the pages of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and pitchforked out of Rugby; and he had followed him, like some devoted batman, through all his military campaigns, from Afghanistan to South Africa to the Indian wars. He had seen him frozen in a blanket in a corpse-strewn defile on the retreat from Kabul in 1842; almost split neatly in two by a grinning Chinaman in a top-knot while running guns down the Yangtse in 1860; struggling in an Indian swamp, after the great ghat massacre at Cawnpore, with what looked like man-eating crocodiles; and charging, by accident, for the Russian guns at Balaclava. As Flashman accumulated the tinware—the Victoria Cross, the Queen's Medal, the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth ("richly deserved"), both he and Mr Fraser knew it was sheer terror that propelled him, delirium funkens, plus a large measure of luck. The great hero of Jallalabad was, in fact, "yellow as yesterday's custard". But he always emerged in splendour. (...)

The bastard! Years ago I wrote him a letter telling him he'd better not:
- die
- go senile
- etc.
without giving us Flashman in Mexico, Australia, the Zulu Wars, the US Civil War, and all the other ones he'd tantalized us with over the years.

The bastard!

[Dunfunkin']

Was he any relation of House of Frazer?

[Matt W]

Nooooo! Dammit, man, this is a catastrophe! My Dad will be distraught!

We've got the Zulus, Nono - at least some of it - but nothing on the US Civil War or Mexico.

Ah well. Rest in Peace, and thanks for some entertaining times.

[Nono]

Quote by: Matt We've got the Zulus, Nono

You mean when he runs into Charity Spring a second time? That's the only instance I can think of of Flashy being down that way.

Which one are you thinking of?

Nothing on the US Civil War or Mexico.

Grave negligence in my view. There had been so many references to the Civil War.

As for Mexico, he once said something like "Mexican jails are the worst in the world -- I ought to know."

The last Flashman published (at least to my knowledge) begins with the scoundrel exiting Mexico. That's as close as we got.