Harry Flashman is a spin-off character from Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. It's very hard to find anything to like about him. In fact, it's impossible. He started out bad, and he gets worse. The books refer to actual historical events, and are so honest and politically incorrect, I'm surprised there's not a periodic Flashman-book-burning. If more of the "right" people discovered them, this would probably happen.
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman's author, wrote:
"My forebears from the Highlands of Scotland were a fairly primitive, treacherous, blood-thirsty bunch and, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, would have been none the worse for washing. Fine, let them be so depicted, if any film maker feels like it; better that than insulting, inaccurate drivel like Braveheart."
(Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506219/The-testament-Flashmans-creator-How-Britain-destroyed-itself.html#ixzz3B2eHFTlD
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One wonders if he had in mind the incident of "courtiers" chopping Mary Queen of Scots' secretary to pieces in front of her. Mr. Fraser died in 2008, a reminder that so many remarkable things took place in the past while I was muddling around unaware. If I could write like that man, I'd be rich as old Jay Gould. Or someone would have shot me earlier.
3 comments:
Flashman (the character) in Flashman (the book) is the worst version of himself. At least, in the books I've read so far.
Although I know this is not what the author intended, there's this suspicion I have that Flashy is not as base and cowardly as he proclaims himself to be. He's careful to show how every situation he gets himself into is caused by greed, lust, or bad luck ... but he keeps getting into & out of horrible danger. Fraser is such a fine author that I wonder if he wants the reader to suspect something is up.
Thanks for the link to the interview! Very interesting.
As for the real William Wallace - if the biography I read is any indication, he was very comfortable burning Englishmen alive in locked churches, or ganging up with a half-dozen of his buddies to attack a lone Englishman before beating & torturing him to death. He was equally comfortable attacking (and killing) four armed soldiers by himself. Very remarkable, in the same way that a tornado is remarkable.
I read somewhere that Scotsmen are the result of Irishmen mixing with Vikings.
I have thought that Flashy was better than he let on, but then he'll backhand another woman or pray that one of his companions is dead.
Well ... there is that. :)
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