Book Review – Flashman’s Lady, George MacDonald Fraser

I found Flashman decades ago.

He was the school bully in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” and was a thoroughly nasty person. The sort of person you forget about as soon as you leave school and hope you never come across him again.

Unfortunately, school bullies grow up and move out into the real world.

During the 1970’s George MacDonald Fraser took the character of Flashman and made him the pivot of a series of  historical novels. The history is well researched and many of the major characters existed in reality. Flashman himself continues to be a coward, a bully and a name-dropper.

Fraser’s writing is compelling and takes the reader on a journey which is redolent with tales of the early Victorian era. The expansion and consolidation of the Empire is retold with Flashman having at least a hand in some of the events which caught the eye of those who formed the readership, if not of the Times, then of the less reputable tabloids.

As for his morals, the less said, the better. No lady was safe from his blandishments.

“Flashman’s Lady” is set around the early 1840’s and takes the reader on a journey from the cricket fields of Kent to the primitive savagery of Borneo and Madagascar. There is some doubt as to just where Flashman and his Lady were in most danger. The school bully remains a thoroughly nasty person and his “exploits” are the result of panic and funk.

At the end of the tale I found myself wondering just who in our modern world began life as a school bully and coward and has since risen to populist fame in modern life.  I found a number of possible culprits who will not be named as this would lead to you, my dear reader, not having the joy of the exersize yourself and could also lead to a number of rather nasty court cases.

Flashman has stood the test of time and is still a good read, if surprisingly naughty and male chauvinistic in these newly conservative, post-AIDS days of equality between the sexes.  I must do some more re-reading of this series.