George MacDonald Fraser

Author

George MacDonald Fraser was a British author, screenwriter, and journalist best known for the Flashman novels, one of the most entertaining and brilliantly crafted series of historical novels ever written. His work combined meticulous historical research with rollicking adventure and a protagonist of spectacular moral cowardice. Born in... Carlisle in 1925, Fraser served in the British Army in Burma during the Second World War — an experience he later recounted in the memoir Quartered Safe Out Here, one of the finest personal accounts of combat ever written. He worked as a journalist in Canada and Scotland, eventually becoming deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. The Flashman Papers, beginning with Flashman (1969), purport to be the memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman — the bully expelled from Rugby School in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days — who goes on to stumble through virtually every major military conflict of the Victorian era. Flashman is a coward, a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel who survives through luck, cunning, and the willingness to run from danger — yet he is somehow present at the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Indian Mutiny, the battle of Little Bighorn, and dozens of other historical events. The series ran to twelve novels, each footnoted with real historical detail that is often indistinguishable from Flashman's fictional adventures. Black Ajax, about the bare-knuckle boxer Tom Molineaux, continued Fraser's gift for historical fiction. Fraser also wrote the screenplays for several films, including The Three Musketeers and Octopussy. He died in 2008. The audiobook editions of Fraser's novels are tremendous fun. His books and audiobooks are essential — the work of a writer who proved that serious history and outrageous entertainment are not mutually exclusive. Read more Show less