I had different ideas about soldiering. — Flashman
In 1965, in the English town of Ashby in Leicestershire, a great literary find was made at a simple household furniture sale. Several oilskin packages containing the memoirs of an old soldier were found in a tea chest. A South African gentleman, nearest in kin to the soldier, took charge of the manuscript before passing it on to another ex-soldier named George Macdonald Fraser for editing.
None of this ever happened, but it was not a literary hoax so much as a good-natured literary conceit. The memoirs were “written” by literary creation Harry Flashman, a school bully who appears in Thomas Hughes’ 1857 novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays. George Macdonald Fraser rather brilliantly took the character and ran with it, creating Flashman, the most cowardly soldier ever to become a hero. The series ran to 12 novels, and the first, Flashman, begins with Harry’s disgrace.
After his drunken expulsion from one of England’s most prestigious public schools, and within the first 50 pages of Flashman, Harry has slept with and roughed up his father’s mistress, joined an army regiment recently returned from a long posting in India (so Flashman knows he won’t have to fight), placed bets on when a man would cry out while being flogged, been caught in bed with a fellow officer’s French mistress, cheated in the resultant duel by having his batman fail to load his opponent’s pistol, and cheated said batman out of a promised £10,000 for carrying out a deed that carries the death penalty.
Flashman is a moral monster, but even at this early stage it is apparent that the more cowardly and craven he is, the higher his star rises. The resultant scandal sees Flashman relocated to a regiment in Scotland to keep down rebellious workers — about which he has no qualms — and Harry lodges with a family which features four daughters. As soon as Flashman has billeted he has his way with one of them, Elspeth. Her description is just the first of many potential triggers that must have caught the attention of forensic historical sensitivity readers by now: “She was beautiful, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and pink-cheeked, and she alone smiled at me with the open, simple smile of the truly stupid.”
Flashman avoids a duel on condition he marries Elspeth. After the wedding he meets the commander of his regiment, Lord Cardigan, setting in motion a device Fraser uses throughout the Flashman novels: Flashman’s place in history. Lord Cardigan was (in)famous for leading the catastrophic Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava and, further to being introduced to royalty (by the Duke of Wellington) in the form of the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the end of Flashman, our anti-hero will go on in subsequent novels to meet Bismarck, Junior Congressman Abraham Lincoln, Lord Palmerston, Colonel Custer, Lord Elgin, John Brown (whom Flashman helps attack Harper’s Ferry), Wild Bill Hickock, Emperor Franz Josef, General Sir Robert Napier and, in a fictional double act, Sherlock Holmes. Fraser thus weaves his creation into the fabric of history.
Now Flashman is posted to India to escape his series of scandals, and his own singular version of soldiering begins, as does the prolific use of a word which, today, may not be uttered:
In India there was power — the power of the white man over the black — and power is a fine thing to have . . . You could live as you pleased, and lord it among the niggers . . .
From that page on, the word is used liberally and casually, with every servant simply being “my nigger.” I have looked online for evidence of the Flashman books being cancelled — to use the modern parlance — but can find nothing, which I suppose means no one in certain circles has read them yet. This is unsurprising, as the last place you would look for one of the new breed of Puritan would be a library.

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Flashman’s bedroom antics are beginning to hint that the novel might descend to the level of a bawdy Victorian romp, and so army life would be expected to put a dampener on Flashman’s ardor. Not a bit of it. He buys a native woman from a merchant and, when he tires of her, sells her on to a major in the artillery. But the military demand at least a level of attention, and Flashman must make himself useful. This is where Fraser employs a bit of an underhanded trick.
It is revealed that Flashman is something of a master linguist. He can pick up Indian and, later, Afghan languages and dialects within a couple of weeks. This hardly tallies with a cad who drank and bullied his way through school, but my working principle with this type of literary audacity is, the better the entertainment, the more inclined I am to pardon the entertainer, even for outrageous poetic license.
At any rate, Flashman singles himself out as an excellent emissary, conveying letters between the various military commanders and tribal chiefs positioned in and around Kabul, the action having shifted to the plains of Afghanistan. Things soon turn sour, however, and rebellious Afghan tribesmen attack the British garrison, which allows us to see two more aspects of Flashman which will recur throughout the series.
Flashy — as he calls himself — and his servant are attacked by Gilzais, and Flashman cuts and runs. His servant, witness to Flashman’s cowardice, is killed, and dies cursing Flashman. When Burnes, one of Flashman’s commanding officers, announces that he is to be court-martialed for failing to deliver a letter in person, Burnes is hacked to death by Gilzais. Those who have the goods on Flashman know where the bodies are buried. Unfortunately, they tend to be their own.
Also, Flashman retains an ability to see through humbug because he is acutely self-aware of his failings. In the case of what the English call “wrong ‘uns,” it takes one to know one. And speaking of wrong ‘uns, Flashman makes a deadly enemy in tribal chief Gul Shah, enraged because — as you may have guessed — Flashman sleeps with his woman. Gul Shah is a great Afghan Bond villain, and a scene in which Flashman is forced into a tug-of-war with a freakish dwarf over a pit of venomous snakes exquisitely shows Flashman’s shrieking, girlish cowardice.
With things too hot in Kabul, the British army agrees to withdraw to India. Of the withdrawal, Flashman has this to say: “Possibly there has been a greater shambles in the history of warfare than our withdrawal from Kabul; probably there has not.”
It’s a shame Flashman couldn’t have been in Kabul in August of 2022 when America withdrew.
Flashman gets a letter from Elspeth on the long march to India, who calls him “My Hector.” Flashman assumed she is cheating on him and has misdirected her letter until he realizes that it is a classical reference, which leads him to a candid appraisal of the British army of the time: “It was a common custom at the time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were.”
The description of the dying army and the slaughter of their native bearers is hellishly rendered, and Fraser is an excellent writer. There’s no excess, plenty of dark humor, and just the right pacing for a boy’s own adventure, the only difference being that boys usually read about authentic heroes, not chancers like Flashman. But the wily, cowardly soldier knows his place in the moral order: “Watching his tall figure moving away I felt a little chill touch me; being a ruffian, perhaps I know a good man when I see one better than most.”
The retreat to India ends up being more or less Flashman and his second, but before he leaves Afghanistan there is still time for two signature events in the Flashman novels. Firstly, Flashman is captured once more by Gul Shah, who promises exquisite torture administered by the woman Flashman seduced and who is now married to the sadistic chieftain. Again, the James Bond-like scenario of master villain and helpless hero plays out, but perhaps this is no surprise. Fraser was also a screenplay writer, and wrote the script for the Bond film Octopussy.
Flashman and Hudson, his second, get out of that bind, but once more there is a witness to Flashman’s cowardice. Hudson is not the type of man to defer to his master when that master is a base coward, and finally snaps when Flashman feigns illness to get out of fighting:
Get up! You’re a Queen’s officer, by God, an’ you’ll behave like one! You’re not ill, Mr Precious Flashman, you’re plain white-livered! That’s all your sickness! But you’ll get up an’ look like a man, even if you aren’t one.
In the resultant siege, Flashman passes out and wakes up with a broken leg in a hospital bed in Jalalabad, petrified that Hudson has told everything to the top brass. He asks his general whether Hudson is alive, to find to his relief that he is not. But the general takes the fact that Flashman’s first words on coming to consciousness were to ask whether his friend was still alive as the final seal on his nobility and heroism, rather than the fear of discovery which actually prompted it.
And so Flashman returns to England a hero, although to find his father is bankrupt and so he must live on an annuity from Elspeth’s father, doled out by his wife herself. He is the talk of society, and Queen Victoria decorates him. The novel ends with the supreme hypocrisy of Flashman, who had been in countless beds while away, feeling jealous that his wife may be having an affair, while meekly accepting money from her purse. The scourge of the Afghans can only say “much obliged.” But Flashman, whose cowardice always seems to look like heroism, ends on a stoical note:
What the devil, you have to make do as best you can; if the tide’s there, swim with it and catch on to whatever offers. You only go by once.
This is a dour time to be alive if literature is a part of your life, and there will be no more readable novels written in our lifetimes. Good literature operates on several levels, but escapism is certainly one of them, and I recommend the company of gentleman rogue Harry Flashman, if you have not already made his acquaintance.
Visit Mark Gullick’s blog: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know.
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15 comments
I fear that my skin has grown too thin but twelve volumes of prurience and cowardice from an anti-hero whose ‘authority’ is used to pour scorn on the British Empire and its soldiers? I can understand why it remains available for sale.
These sorts of texts, whilst they may embody a certain amount of truth and on publication would have been seen as obvious satire, praised by PG Wodehouse no less, have the effect of breaking down heroic legends and providing a pretext for the retributive ‘scouring of the shire’ which England is now undergoing. For consumption by those definitely in our camp only,
Good points. We process satire differently now, and some can’t process it at all, and see it as statement. Flashman sits in our camp because our processors work fine.
Good rejoinder, and good review. The Flashman novels are magnificent and absolutely ‘unwoke’. Around a dozen years ago, I read the three in a “canonical” Everyman’s Library edition: Flashman, Flash for Freedom!, and Flashman in the Great Game (where if I recall he ended by receiving the Victoria Cross for his ‘bravery’). I should have bought a copy (I read the one from my local library, probably disappeared now), as I’d like to reread them before I die. I also own and have read a couple of paperback editions of other titles in the series (Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman and the Tiger).
These novels are tremendous fun, very well written (better, imo, and certainly more enjoyable, than the more celebrated Aubrey/Maturin historical series of Patrick O’Brien, but perhaps that’s because nautical minutiae leave me cold), on the borderline between quality fiction and actual literature (which I suppose is why there was an Everyman’s edition), and works every Dissident Rightist (probably esp the males among us – but that’s most of us, no?) should read for pure pleasure. They will not ‘offend’ any of you in the least, I promise.
Has Flashman, etc, ever been filmed? If not, they are crying out for cinematic adaption.
It has apparently been filmed several times, in one of which Malcolm McDowell plays Flashy. Fraser also wrote a brilliant account of WW2 army life called Quartered Safe Out Here, should you ever chance across it.
Au contraire, the Harry Flashman novels were an in-your-face apologia for a type that were too often dismissed as bounders and cads. And that typology in turn was used to damn the British Empire as a whole.
So George MacDonald Fraser turned that simplistic condemnation on its head by making Harry a romantic adventurer with demonstrable courage…and a sense of humor.
It’s been a while since I read the first Flashman, which I mainly remember as happening in Afghanistan. I’ve learned the setting was historically accurate for the most part, but that’s really all that sticks with me! These things need a re-read.
I wonder about the historical accuracy of the India part. Did the British ever refer to Indians as “niggers?” I don’t think they kept Indians as chattel slaves, at least in any regular way. Of course there was a caste superiority of the British over their colonial subjects, but I don’t think they were ever abusive to the degree that Macdonald suggests. I think perhaps Macdonald is projecting “woke” American civil rights era complaints upon the British in India. I don’t know for sure, but these portraits are different from those Kipling offers of india, which are more based on actual cultural experience, i.e. that he lived in india and grew up there. I doubt Kipling would pull any punches for our feelings. He said just what he thought in other places. “Half devil and half child…”
I think history was Fraser’s playground, and I don’t suppose his voice is any more reliable than Flashman’s. I have’t read enough Kipling.
Highly recommended.
I discovered the Flashman series about twenty years and read all twelve novels with intense enjoyment. Fraser is, indeed, a master story teller keeping you on edge though out each novel, wondering how HF is going to get out of his latest fix, reveling in his dark, cynical humor.
I guess, Mark, as you’ve suggested, he’s escaped cancellation and the wrath of the New Puritans because they don’t know about him yet.
The Flashman books do possess a rare blend of historical accuracy, profound humour and sound judgment.
One thing which makes the Flashman series brilliant is Fraser’s ability to drop the reader into the middle of an historical situation and see it from the inside out.
Harry Flashman is present at Alexander Burnes’ residency in Kabul when it is stormed by an Afghan mob on the night of 1-2 November 1841. Those familiar with the historical event can see how the fight, flight and fiasco developed with a sort of shock of recognition.
In Flashman in the Great Game, he is one of the defenders of the besieged garrison holding Cawnpore during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Fraser rather cleverly shows how Flashman is responsible for the British decision to surrender to the rebels which in turn leads to debacle. Yet Fraser (apparently) speaking through Flashman insists that raising the white flag was the correct decision (perhaps a post hoc attempt to salvage the honor of the British officers in command at Cawnpore?).
Flashman marches through a realm of Social Darwinism, long before the suicidal ideology of liberalism descended upon the West. No one (White or non-White) murmurs post-modern platitudes about “de-colonization,” “majority rule” and (certainly not!) “equality.” It’s all one big struggle for dominance and devil take the hindmost. Emirs, Ranis, Mandarins, Apache war chiefs…they would all conquer and colonize Europe and North America if they had half a chance to do so.
Flashman’s cynicism gets to the core of the matter. Through his “pen” he presents a gallery of rogues, knaves, scoundrels, butchers and general officer grade incompetents. But there’s a grudging respect given to the eminents who built and defended the British Empire: James Brooke, Colin Campbell, George Broadstreet, Florentia Sale, Robert Napier, James Hope Grant, as well as the occasional American like Kit Carson.
If back in the 19th century they marched to the relief of Jalalabad, Lucknow and Peking, a new generation could be inspired to do the same today for besieged White nations.
Worryingly, I think that what there is of my knowledge of history comes from novelists rather than historians.
You are safer in the hands of certain types of novelists over most historians.
Great essay. And, I just discovered Mark’s blog.
There was indeed a movie…Royal Flash, 1975, with Malcolm McDowell as Flashman, Oliver Reed as Bismarck, and Alan Bates with a ton of other actors, screenplay by Fraser and directed by Richard Lester.
I never read Flashman, but did see the movie. It was a lot of fun, full of comedy adventure, and Malcolm McDowell was the perfect sleazy cad to be Flashman. I think if I had a problem was that it was a rehash of The Prisoner of Zenda, but Hollywood wanted a rehash…they like tried and true material, which was why they nixed the first book.
Lester said he was at pains to make it different from The Three Musketeers, which he directed before this, and found filming in Bavaria difficult, but he said it’s one of the few films of his he enjoys seeing again.
I think Flashman’s anti-hero stance didn’t grab me, but I do very much enjoy Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series. Perhaps because Sharpe isn’t a cad. He has a sense of honor, and he’s a common sod in the army.
I will say I found reading two O’Brien novels boring. I just never got into them, and wonder why Master and Commander got made. The Horatio Hornblower BBC series was much better.
I think CC readers would enjoy the movie.
Also, Frank Frazetta, the famous fantasy artist, did some Flashman covers.
Yes, Indians were called niggers. All the time.
Orwell called them blacks. All ye need to know.
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