# R.I.P. George MacDonald Fraser, 1925-2008



## The Bread Guy (3 Jan 2008)

Let's not forget a work of his I'm particularly fond of, "The General Danced at Dawn" - shared with the usual disclaimer....

*George MacDonald Fraser, 82, author of 'Flashman' novels*
Margalit Fox, International Herald Tribune, 3 Jan 08
Article link

George MacDonald Fraser, a British writer whose popular novels about the arch-rogue Harry Flashman followed their hero as he galloped, swashbuckled, drank and womanized his way through many of the signal events of the 19th century, died Wednesday on the Isle of Man. He was 82 and had made his home there in recent years.

The cause was cancer, said Vivienne Schuster, his British literary agent.

Over nearly four decades, Fraser produced a dozen rollicking picaresques centering on Flashman. The novels purport to be installments in a multivolume "memoir," known collectively as the Flashman Papers, in which the hero details his prodigious exploits in battle, with the bottle, and in bed. In the process, Fraser cheerfully punctured the enduring ideal of a long-vanished era in which men were men, tea was strong and the sun never set on the British Empire.

The Flashman Papers include, among other titles, "Flashman" (World Publishing, 1969); "Flashman in the Great Game" (Knopf, 1975); and, most recently, "Flashman on the March" (Knopf, 2005).

The second volume in the series, "Royal Flash" (Knopf, 1970), was made into a film of the same title in 1975, starring Malcolm McDowell as Flashman.

In what amounted to an act of literary retribution, Fraser plucked Flashman from the pages of "Tom Brown's School Days," Thomas Hughes's classic novel of English public-school life published in 1857. In that book, Tom, the innocent young hero, repeatedly falls prey to a sadistic bully named Flashman.

In Fraser's hands, the cruel, handsome Flashman is all grown up and in the British Army, serving in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now Brigadier General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, he is a master equestrian, a pretty fair duelist and a polyglot who can pitch woo in a spate of foreign tongues. He is also a scoundrel, a drunk, a liar, a cheat, a braggart and a coward. (A favorite combat strategy is to take credit for a victory from which he has actually run away.)

Last, but most assuredly not least, Flashman is a serial adulterer who by Volume 9 of the series has bedded 480 women. (That Flashman is married himself, to the fair, dimwitted Elspeth, is no impediment. She cuckolds him left and right, in any case.)

Readers adored him. Today, the Internet is populated with a bevy of Flashman fan sites. Flashman's exploits take him to some of the most epochal events of his time, from British colonial campaigns to the American Civil War, in which he magnanimously serves on both the Union and the Confederate sides. He rubs up against eminences like Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Florence Nightingale and Abraham Lincoln. For his work, Flashman earns a string of preposterous awards, including a knighthood, the Victoria Cross and the Medal of Honor.

Fraser was so skilled as a mock memoirist that he had some early readers fooled. Writing in The New York Times in 1969 after the first novel was published, Alden Whitman said:

"So far, 'Flashman' has had 34 reviews in the United States. Ten of these found the book to be genuine autobiography."

The son of Scottish parents, George MacDonald Fraser was born on April 2, 1925, in Carlisle, England, near the Scottish border. His boyhood reading, like that of nearly every British boy of his generation, included "Tom Brown's School Days."

In World War II, Fraser served in India and Burma with the Border Regiment. His memoir of the war in Burma, "Quartered Safe Out Here" (Harvill), was published in 1993.

After leaving the military, Fraser embarked on a journalism career, working for newspapers in England, Canada and Scotland. He eventually became the assistant editor of The Glasgow Herald and, in the 1960s, was briefly its editor.

Tiring of newspaper work, Fraser decided, as he later said in interviews, to "write my way out" with an original Victorian novel.

In a flash, he remembered Flashman, and the first book tumbled out in the evenings after work.

"In all, it took 90 hours, no advance plotting, no revisions, just tea and toast and cigarettes at the kitchen table," he said in an interview quoted in the reference work "Authors and Artists for Young Adults."

His other books include several non-Flashman novels, among them "Mr. American" (Simon & Schuster, 1980); "The Pyrates" (Knopf, 1984); and "Black Ajax" (HarperCollins, 1997). With Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, Fraser wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film "Octopussy," released in 1983.

Fraser's latest book, "The Reavers," a non-Flashman novel, is scheduled to be published by Knopf in April ....



More from Bloomberg, The Telegraph, Reuters, The Guardian's Book Blog and Agence France Presse

_- edited to add links to other stories -_


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## BillN (3 Jan 2008)

I loved his "McAuslan" series, I read them over and over until they fell apart.  GMF will be missed, and we add him to the roll of the WW2 Veterans we are losing daily.

RIP Sir, you've earned it.


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## geo (3 Jan 2008)

RIP He will definitively be missed.
Though not a great fan of the Flashman series, I LOVED McAUSLAN
I could really relate to the scruffy soldier from hell in that I have had one or two (dozen) over the years.

Thank you very much for so many good reads

As I raise my glass & toast to GMFs name, 
I offer my condolences & best wishes To his family, friends and comrades 

God speed!


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## Good2Golf (3 Jan 2008)

RIP, George Fraser!  I enjoyed reading many of the Flashman papers.

G2G


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## Kirkhill (3 Jan 2008)

There goes a great role model and a fantastic raconteur that has given me many hours of entertainment and information.  I'll sorely miss his "next" book.


Farewell young Dand.


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## ModlrMike (3 Jan 2008)

I spent many hours reading his works, both Flashman and McAuslan. I shall have to return myself to them so that I can remember what a great writer Mr Fraser was.

RIP


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## Kat Stevens (4 Jan 2008)

Damn, sad news.  I never read anything by GMF that I didn't like.


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## AJFitzpatrick (4 Jan 2008)

Alas that we will never get the missing history now. Particularly Flashman at Gettysburg. One wonders if the literary rights will be passed on in a manner similar to James Bond.

RIP 

Edit: Typo


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## Bane (4 Jan 2008)

Quartered Safe Out Here is an account of his personal experience in the Burma Campaign.  Absolutely touching and the finest personal war memoir I've come across.  I was partial to his McAuslan books too, but QSOH was my favorite of his by far.  RIP


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## Danjanou (4 Jan 2008)

RIP "Darkie"


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## Towards_the_gap (4 Jan 2008)

Best.............Author..............EVER..

RIP Sir, your words will be missed. The light at the signpost has been extinguished.


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## BernDawg (4 Jan 2008)

Reading the Flashman stories is kinda like driving past a car wreck.  The character is so appalling that you just have to look to see what happens next.  The world has lost a brilliant author.
RIP Sir


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## Rifleman62 (25 Jan 2008)

Futher info:

Fraser joined the Border Regiment as a young man (just eighteen.) in 1943 and was sent to join Section 9, Company B of the 9th Border regiment in 17th Indian division in India.

Fraser made Lance-Corporal several times. A rank he consistently was stripped of for loss of such army essentials as Tea urns. Eventually Fraser left his section in the Border regiment, being given the chance to take an officer selection test. He was granted a temporary commission and moved to the Gordon Highlanders, serving in the Middle east after the war. He declined the offer of a permanent commission reflecting that he preferred the active service he had seen during the war to the duties of a peacetime soldier. Recollectons of the Gordons can be found in the McAuslan books.

For his work as an author over the past thirty years George MacDonald Fraser was honoured with an O.B.E by the Her Majesty the Queen July 1999.

Quartered Safe Out Here (1993), or Quartered Safe Out There: A Harrowing Tale of World War II (2007) with its hard-bitten opening sentence, "The first time I smelt Jap was in a deep dry-river bed in the Dry Belt, somewhere near Meiktila," he told of the war as seen by a rifleman in an infantry platoon and ignored the big picture. The book was considered one of the great personal memoirs of the Japanese war.

A busy man of tremendous energy, Fraser claimed to have written 20 or 30 film scripts. Most of them were never made, but even so, he said, the money was very good. The scripts that did reach the screen were The Three Musketeers (1974), The Four Musketeers (1975), Royal Flash (1975), The Prince and the Pauper (1977), the James Bond film Octopussy (1983), Red Sonia (1985), Casanova (1987) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989).


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## geo (25 Jan 2008)

Octopussy was one of his?

That explains a lot.... really!


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## Spr.Earl (1 Feb 2008)

My heart sank when I read Flash's obit.
But I did not know that he served with the forgotten army in Burma .

 

Nick


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## jollyjacktar (14 Feb 2008)

I am truly saddened to hear of his passing.  I have read and do own most of the Flashman series.  They were my delight to take my mind off of my 3's in Esquimault.  I am sorry that there will be no further adventures to look forwards to.  Thank you so very much Mr. Fraser for so may hours of laughter.  Fair winds and following seas.


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