Flashman's Lady introduction and Chapter 1

It's been a while. I think I got a bit Flashmanned out there. I also had other things to read and do, something had to give and unfortunately it was Flash Harry. A bit of a shame really because Flashman's Lady is one of my favourites.

There's a few reasons I rate it so highly. It was the sixth of the books to be published, but it fits in chronologically during the period after first encountering Bismarck and Lola Montez and before the second part of Royal Flash. This is one of the reasons that it is a near impossibility to read the books chronologically and why it's not the most satisfying experiences to do so.

I like the Harry of the period George MacDonald Fraser covers in Flashman's Lady. He was young and larger than life, he was still cynical, but less so than he became and he was still a little idealistic. Then there's the subject matter of the early part of the book; cricket. I'm a cricket fan, always have been. Admittedly I do prefer Australian Rules, but cricket probably runs it a close second. One gets the impression that George MacDonald Fraser was also a cricket buff. Finally there's Elspeth. The Lady of the title is Elspeth, there are even excerpts from her diary in this one and they are delightful. It's great to get a closer look at her and realise that she has depths Harry simply does not understand.

Unlike some of the other books there's no real high stakes in this one. Harry and Elspeth's lives for sure, but the Empire won't come to a shuddering halt if Harry can't get out of this one with his miserable skin intact, as is the case with some of other installments.

The cover is a beauty. Harry in his cricket whites, complete with pads, bat and top hat, a sword held like a cricket bat over one broad shoulder. Elspeth, holding her skirts up, is coming up behind him and there's a beach side battle brewing in the distance.

Included is Fraser's traditional explanatory note at the start, and he also mentions that Elspeth's greatly religious and somewhat repressed sister Grizel de Rothschild had gotten hold of this one. She has modified Flashman's language and included some pages from Elspeth's diaries to which she has added her own comments.

I appreciated the addition of the diaries and even Grizel's acidic little comments were amusing, but I really don't know why he had her change Flashman's language. It basically means that every blasphemy or mild profanity has the first and last letter, but none of the middle ones. It makes it hard to read occasionally and must have been a bugger to typeset. About halfway through I think it stops. Clearly Grizel either stopped reading or George MacDonald Fraser gave it up for a bad job.

It begins with Harry talking about the leg before wicket rule. I can only imagine what people not from cricket playing countries made of this. I found it highly amusing. The book was written in the mid 1970's, it was purportedly written by someone who played cricket in the mid 1800's, and it's discussing a series played in the early part of the 20th century. I suspect Flashman's grousing about the tampering with the leg before wicket rule was a view shared by the author when he penned the book. They're still doing it. Even now in 2013 they're still mucking about with the leg before wicket rule and they still haven't gotten it right!

Harry introduces this packet by talking about how he dropped into a well known sportsman's pub to get some of the talk and feel of the game while he was being lionised as the hero of Jalallabad. I personally think the early part of Flashman's Lady contains one of George MacDonald Fraser's rare continuity errors. While at the pub he bumps into Tom Brown. He initially gives the impression that he doesn't recognise him, although when Brown reminds him about the bullying at Rugby he remembers quick enough. Flashman in the Great Game ended with Harry raging about the publication of Tom Brown's Schooldays and the damage it did to his reputation. I just find it odd that he would speak the way he does of Brown in this book after what he said at the end of the previous one.

Brown, believing Harry has turned over a new leaf, invites him to play a game of cricket at Lords. Rugby Old Boys against the men of Kent, who contained some of England's most celebrated cricketers of the time.

It turns out at school Harry was a demon fast bowler. This shouldn't surprise. Most fast bowlers are bullies at heart. Of all Harry's talents the cricket is the one he is most proud of, mainly because it wasn't God given, it was something he actually had to work out.

The game itself is something of a carnival as apparently cricket was at the time. It was a betting game, and again interestingly enough it still is. Many of the more outlandish bets that Flashman talks about are pretty common these days, especially in the sub continent, they're called exotic bets. They're every bit as much of a danger to the game as they were then, too.

I was particularly amused by Harry's comments about Brooke, his old head boy at Rugby.

'he was clean-limbed and handsome and went to church and had no impure thoughts and was kind to animals and old ladies and was a midshipman in the Navy; what happened to him I've no idea, but I hope he absconded with the ship's funds and the admiral's wife and set up a knocking-shop in Valparaiso'

That is vintage Flashman.

Harry distinguishes himself by taking the first ever hat trick, although I suspect George MacDonald Fraser is taking huge licence here. I'm not sure how the hat trick got it's name, but I don't think the explanation given in the Notes is entirely accurate.

Elspeth happens to meet an exotic character who goes by the name of Don Solomon. Harry takes an instant dislike to him, in part because he's taken Elspeth's eye, and in part because he thinks he's a villain. It takes one to know one.

Harry's performance on the field, a disreputable character by the name of Daedalus Tighe who he met and Don Solomon are all going to change the course of the old soldier's history very soon.

Flashman at the Charge - an introduction

Time for the read of Flashman at the Charge to start, so some of my thoughts about the book before reading. Admittedly it’s a rather unwieldy title, but it’s far better than the attempt to make the book sound amusing as they did with Flash for Freedom. The ‘Charge’ that the title refers to is the celebrated Charge of the Light Brigade immortalised by then Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his epic poem. A great many can quote one of the poem’s best known lines: ‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred’, but I’m not so certain that they could tell you what the poem was about or what war it refers to. It was a celebrated and ultimately futile charge during the equally futile Crimean War.

For the 4th book in a row George MacDonald Fraser links a significant piece of literature to his venal anti-hero. In Flashman it was Tom Brown’s Schooldays, in Royal Flash, Prisoner of Zenda got the Flashman treatment, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin has a reference in Flash for Freedom and in Flashman at the Charge it is The Charge of the Light Brigade.

To date the Crimean War is probably the best known conflict that Flashy has been involved in, but Flashman at the Charge isn’t just about that. Harry gets himself in out of trouble in beds from London to Central Asia and gets caught up in, not only Britain’s struggle against Russia in the Crimea, but also foils a Russian plan to take over Central Asia, and thus put pressure on Britain’s ‘jewel in the crown’ of India.

There was talk in 2007 that Celtic Films were going to produce a number of the books as TV projects. Picture Palace said that they were going to do Flashman at the Charge, and there was even talk that James Purefoy would be cast as Harry (shame it never came off, because that is almost perfect casting for the lead role). It looked as if they were going to be done along the same lines as Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, which both companies had also been involved in. There was a reason they chose Flashman at the Charge; it is an absolute cracker of a novel. Harry is in his 30’s, so not as hard to cast as when he was younger, and it’s about a conflict which is even now still relatively well known. There’s been recent news that Michael Fassbender has been cast as Harry in a 2013 project, but no word about which of the books is being adapted. I’ve heard similar rumours in the past and they generally don’t come to much. If this one is true I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the plan is to do Flashman at the Charge, Fassbender is the right age for it.

This is where you have a significant difference between chronological order and publication order. When readers last saw Harry he had just negotiated with John Charity Spring to take him from New Orleans back home to England. That was in 1849, possibly early spring. Flashman at the Charge picks up in London in 1854, roughly 4 - 5 years have passed since the end of Flash for Freedom and knowing Harry he couldn’t possibly have stayed out of trouble for that long, so readers knew there were more adventures in between Flash for Freedom and Flashman at the Charge, but just when George MacDonald Fraser would get around to writing them was anyone’s guess.

The cover for the edition I’m using, is as customary, has Flashman in the foreground, with a battle scene, most likely the Crimea, in the background. Flashy has his magnificent cavalry whiskers, or ‘tart catchers’ as he amusingly referred to them in Flash for Freedom, on prominent display, he’s wearing that self satisfied smile of his and he’s figged out in full dress military gear, complete with a ridiculous looking helmet and a flag. This one is gonna be fun.

Flash for Freedom - some afterthoughts

As I said at the start of this that Flash for Freedom does differ from the two books that preceded it. It's in North America, I don't know if Flashman ever went to Canada, he spent most of his time on the continent either in the US or Mexico, but he seemed to have gone most other places and I can only imagine what sort of chaos he could have caused in Canada, so there may very well be an adventure there that never actually made it to print. Secondly at no stage is Flashman ever actually doing something for Queen and Country. He pretends to be a naval officer, but that's only to get himself out of trouble. It also ends differently as I have covered.

It seems to be an attempt by George MacDonald Fraser to make a comment on the slave trade, and in fact when you think about it slavery of one form or another is the continuing theme of the book. It begins with the downtrodden masses of England, who like many in similar straits in Europe were rising up in revolution at their plight (this was covered briefly at the end of Royal Flash) and it continued early in Flash for Freedom, it was largely how Harry came to think about this adventure and how Morrison managed to railroad him into having a go at politics. The slavery theme continues on the Dahomey and in the slave states of the United States, only the slaves in those positions can't rise up in the way the factory and mine workers in England could. George MacDonald Fraser liked to make comments on the hypocrisy of those in power in Victorian England, and he does it in Flash for Freedom. On the one hand they decry slavery, although they know it goes on and they largely allow it to, no one ever looked close enough at Morrison's business to realise that he profited from slavery and his ship was captained by an Englishman. On the other hand they allow and profit from legalised slavery amongst their own in the factories and the mines that were often owned and run by the very same aristocracy that railed against slavery in the colonies.

I do like Flash for Freedom, clunky title aside, and it introduces some of the most memorable characters from the entire series: John Charity Spring and Susie Willinck are two of them, not to forget the elfin Missus Mandeville. It's a great rip roaring tale from a bygone somewhat genteel age with riverboats and bustling ports and a gold rush underway. I couldn't shake the thought at the end that Harry wasn't out of the States yet and it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought, so there was more to the tale than first thought.

Three down and lots more to go. Join me again in March when Harry Flashman leads the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death.

Royal Flash

Before I can begin rereading and reviewing the second of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels; Royal Flash, I need to talk about the 1975 film of the same name.

I don't think you can really discuss the book without also mentioning the film. In addition to being a journalist and novelist George MacDonald Fraser was also a screenwriter. The Three Musketeers (the 1973 version starring Michael York and Richard Chamberlain), it's sequel The Four Musketeers and James Bond's Indian odyssey Octopussy are among his credits. The Flashman's tend to have a cinematic quality about them, and there were even moves to make Flashman into a film starring John Alderton (Please Sir and The Upchat Line), overtures were made to the actor, and he even mentions this in his autobiography, but curiously enough it is the second adventure that did actually make it to the screen.

I've long held the theory that Royal Flash was written specifically to be adapted into a film. There's a few reasons for this. It's rather unusual for a Flashman in a number of ways. It's the only book to be set entirely in Europe, it's the only one that features a completely fictional country as part of it's backdrop. The map in the front of Royal Flash of the duchy of Strackenz is actually an inversion of the Isle of Man, which is where Fraser was living at the time the book was published. Occasionally in the books Fraser adapts scenes from famous novels of the time when the book is set and then claims that Harry Flashman's experiences were actually the basis for the fictional scene, however most of the storyline of Royal Flash is in fact a pastiche of Anthony Hope's 1894 swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda. I believe this decision was made by the author because filming the books had been discussed and the best way to do that was to use a plot line that had already been successfully filmed. The Prisoner of Zenda had already been adapted to the screen five times by the time Royal Flash was written (a sixth version was made in 1979 starring Peter Sellers and Lynne Frederick), being successful in both the silent and talking eras as well as in black and white and colour.

The man behind the film version of Royal Flash was director Richard Lester and George MacDonald Fraser wrote the screenplay. This should have worked. Lester and Fraser had also worked together on the Musketeer films. Unfortunately it didn't on this occasion. Fraser felt that Lester concentrated too much on 'bawdy buffoonery' rather than the historical facts that formed the basis of the story. No other Flashman's were filmed after Royal Flash because the author said that he would not let anyone else have control of the script and that simply doesn't happen in Hollywood. He could also never find an actor he thought could play the role properly. He modelled Flashman to an extent on the Australian born Hollywood star Erroll Flynn, and the idea of Daniel Day-Lewis struck a chord with him, but it never happened.

Royal Flash the film was actually my introduction to the character. I can remember seeing a trailer for the film when it first came out and being intrigued by the swashbuckling clips, but the rating meant that my parents wouldn't take me to see it (I was only a kid at the time), by the time I saw the film on TV one night I'd already seen Thomas Hughes version of Flashman, and the film version was far more preferable. It was after seeing the film that I sought out the books.

I can kind of see why Richard Lester chose to go the route he did with the film version. This was at the end of the Carry On film era and audiences did still like the 'nudge nudge wink wink' style of film, which is what Royal Flash did, but it did not marry well with the rest of the content and created an uneasy mix, which didn't really work as either a historical satire or a broad double entendre laden sexual farce.

One of the problems for me was the casting. They did well with Swedish model and actress Britt Ekland as the ice maiden Duchess Irma of Strackenz. The role which didn't require her to do much other than look pretty and bounce around in bed for a scene or so was perfect for the Swedish beauty. Ekland was always more famous for who she was dating or married to than any actual role she ever secured, and she remains one of the worst Bond girls ever as Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun (also a very naff Bond film, possibly the worst one of the entire franchise). Oliver Reed, who when sober, was a pretty decent actor, was also well cast as empire builder Otto von Bismarck. Unfortunately where they fell down was with the casting of Flashman himself. That role went to Malcolm McDowell. At the time McDowell was popular, best known for his work in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Malcolm McDowell is a fine actor, but he was physically wrong to play Flashman. Flashman is described as being tall (6'2" or 3"), broad shouldered, with dark hair and features. McDowell may have had the height, but he's not particularly powerful looking and he's a ginger. Malcolm McDowell could never pass as an Afghani or an Indian as Flashman has successfully on a number of occasions. Then there was the way he played Harry, he came across as rather weaselly, which considering what a coward Flashman is makes sense, but a big part of why Flashman gets away with what he does is because despite the reality of the situation he actually looks like a hero and can always bluff his way out of things. It was hard to buy this from McDowell's portrayal.

In terms of success I think the film did moderately at the box office, although curiously it's never been released to DVD in the UK. The upshot of it was that George MacDonald Fraser was not happy with it, and he's the author and holds the property. They make further attempts to make the books into films or TV shows now that the author has passed away, it does depend on what the holder of his literary estate allows. I personally think that cast right and made by someone who respected the source material the books would make excellent TV shows, rather like Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series.

Now, I've covered the film and the book briefly and given you my thoughts on them I'll get into the reread next time.

Flashman - a wrap up

So now I've read through Flashman, the first book of the Flashman Papers, what are my thoughts on the book as a whole and it's place in the series?

A couple of things need to be cleared up. I should have mentioned that poor old Elphy Bey never made it out of Afghanistan. He was held as a prisoner/hostage and died in captivity before he could be handed back to the British. He was incredibly incompetent and largely responsible for the disaster that followed, but it wasn't a good way to go out. Akbar Khan became a hero amongst the Afghan people briefly for his part in the revolt. He died in 1845, and was believed to have been poisoned by his father Dost Mohammad, who feared his ambitions.

Gul Shah, Narreeman and Ilderim Khan are all fictional creations. Gul Shah was killed by Sergeant Hudson (also fictional) in Flashman and Narreeman ran off, never to be heard from again, although she does live on in Flashman's memory. Ilderim appears again in Flashman and the Great Game.

I've always found it of interest that George MacDonald Fraser chose to focus on the First Anglo-Afghan War as his subject for the first of the books. It was a little known, and not often talked about, defeat for the British forces at the beginning of one of their great ages under Queen Victoria. Given that Flashman was the right age at the right time it made sense, but the empire was big enough that he could have focussed on other more victorious campaigns. As I go through the books defeat is something that I feel Fraser likes to highlight in his narratives. Flashman seems to be the one victorious person in defeat.

The historical notes in the back of Flashman are only just the tip of the iceberg, they get longer and more numerous, and I find them a highlight of the books. They bring larger than life people like Avitabile and Cotton into sharp relief, and prompt me to find out more about them. Those two themselves could have books written just about them that would read every bit as exciting as any of Flashman's adventures.

If you can get past how bad Harry Flashman is, then you should enjoy the books. For what it's worth I think he's at his worst in the first book. He does mellow and doesn't repeat all the mistakes he made in Flashman.

It was a promising star,t and I'm very pleased that readers gave the character a chance and we got 12 rip roaring stories of Harry Flashman, the biggest bounder in history.

I'm aiming to do one book a month, I kind of made that decision after I'd started this and it spilled over 2 months. So join me in January when I'll take you through Royal Flash as Harry cuts a swathe through the bedrooms of the continent and makes a mockery of The Prisoner of Zenda.

A New Project

The story of Cerebus is done, all 300 issues of it.

I said when I finished the final Cerebus post to stay tuned for something new, so here it is. The Flashman Papers. I need to do a bit of explaining before continuing.

When I decided to reread and review Cerebus the idea came to me because there were a number of read and review and reread projects going on about the place. I read some of them and thought 'Hey, I can do that!' only what to do? Mostly what I came up with were popular things and had all been done to death. Let's face it did the web really need another A Song of Ice and Fire or Harry Potter reread? In the end I came up with a fairly obscure title. Outside of a few comic collectors not many people are aware of Cerebus, at it's height the book only ever had a circulation of just over 30,000 issues per month. I knew at some stage I'd finish Cerebus, so I wondered what to do next. My initial thought was to do Neil Gaiman's Sandman, mainly because I've never read it, and it's talked about a lot, and I know I'm missing some jokes and pop culture references there. I will still read it and review it, just not sure when. Sandman is another graphic novel and I really wanted to do a book or a series, that's when I remembered the Flashman Papers. I reread all 12 of them early in 2010 and did intend to do a series of reviews, however when i started reviewing them there's just too much for me to put all in one review, so I decided to read and review them a chapter at a time similar to the way I did Cerebus.

Who's this Flashman bloke and what is this all about, I hear you ask. Glad you did. There's a book called Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, it came out in 1857. It's an English classic, and it covers the adventures of a young man called Tom Brown attending the elite British public school of Rugby (I believe the game is named after the school, that's where legend has it that it was first played when William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it). The villain of the piece is the school bully; Flashman. He's a coward, he smokes, drinks and gambles, he cheats and lies, he uses woman badly, in short he's everything you do not want a young English gentleman of the Victoria era turning out to become. Flashman makes Brown's life a misery until he gets as Hughes' puts it 'beastly drunk' and is expelled. The characters life may have ended there and then, but for a British journalist by the name of George MacDonald Fraser.

George MacDonald Fraser wondered what would have become of someone like Flashman. Wealthy, titled and with an education behind him, but expelled in disgrace from one of the country's top schools. Where would he go? What would he do? The answer; join the army, of course. Thomas Hughes created Flashman as the archetypal bully, he didn't even give the character a first name. MacDonald Fraser gave him a first name, a family history and created the most extraordinary life for him post Rugby. I don't know how many adventures he initially intended to write, but he had completed 12 books between 1969 and his death in 2008, there were also allusions throughout the 12 published packets of the Flashman Papers to other adventures, most notably the American Civil War, that were never written, but were part of Flashman's extensive Who's Who entry, created by George MacDonald Fraser to conform to the conceit that Harry Flashman was a real person and he was only editing and publishing his memoirs, which lay undiscovered for many years before being found in a Midlands salesroom. In the Flashman Papers an elderly Harry sets the record straight about his extraordinary life of adventure and his ill gotten hero status. I've had a ball every time I've read the books, so I hope you will too as you follow Harry and I through his life in an era of adventure.