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Topic: Author of popular Flashman novels dies at 82 (Read 3502 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Author of popular Flashman novels dies at 82
« on: 2008-01-03 00:48:23 » |
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[Blunderov] I and millions of others might now have to give up the perrenial hope of just one more Flashman adventure. Or could there be a posthumous packet of papers lurking undiscovered somewhere...?
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2234527,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
Author of popular Flashman novels dies at 82
Martin Hodgson
Thursday January 3, 2008
The Guardian
The novelist George MacDonald Fraser, creator of the caddish Victorian anti-hero Harry Flashman, has died at the age of 82, his publisher said last night.
Fraser, who was appointed an OBE in 1999, served as an infantryman in Burma and India during the second world war and later worked as a screenwriter and journalist, eventually becoming deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. But it is for the 12 novels in the Flashman series that he will be best remembered.
Launched in 1969, the books reimagined the later life of the bully in Thomas Hughes' Victorian classic Tom Brown's Schooldays. Purportedly based on packages of "rediscovered" documents, the novels depict a vain and cowardly rogue who fights, drinks and womanises his way around the British empire. Despite his less than heroic behaviour, Flashman emerges from each adventure covered in glory.
The first book was set in Afghanistan, with the eponymous hero emerging from the disastrous retreat from Kabul with his reputation enhanced. The last novel, Flashman on the March, published in 2005, was set during the Abyssinian Campaign of 1868. Fraser was an outspoken critic of recent British foreign policy, calling the invasion of Iraq "the foulest war crime that this country has ever perpetrated".
Though many found Flashman's 19th-century racism and sexism distasteful, the books sold in huge numbers, and Fraser was widely praised for his attention to historical detail. He told one interviewer: "I'm rather a cynic, I suppose. I do not believe in the niceness of humanity."
The author Kingsley Amis called him "a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist".
Fraser's screen credits included The Three Musketeers and the James Bond film Octopussy, but only one of the novels, Royal Flash, was made into a film, with Malcolm McDowell in the lead role.
The Carlisle-born journalist turned author, who lived on the Isle of Man, had fought cancer for several years. He was married and had three children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman
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Fritz
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Re:Author of popular Flashman novels dies at 82
« Reply #1 on: 2010-09-15 12:39:44 » |
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oih ... Mr. Blunderov was in the Guardian .... cool .... down on one knee before yee ... oh noble sir.
Cheers
Fritz
PS: still didn't find what I was actually looking for .... sigh
Blunderov in Lights
Source: The Gaurdian
Author: Richard Lea
Date: Friday 4 January 2008 08.30
"George MacDonald Fraser has died. What a loss to fiction," says Bill Crider, leading a wave of tributes to the creator of Harry Flashman that is sweeping through the blogosphere.
"When the first Harry Flashman novel was published in paperback," he continues, "I picked it up off the paperback rack at the TG & Y Store in Brownwood, Texas, attracted by the dandy cover. I read a couple of paragraphs and bought the book. Ever since that time, I've been a Flashman fan ... When I read ... about Fraser's passing, my first selfish thought was, 'Now we'll never get the story of how Flashy fought on both sides during the Civil War.' But now I'm just glad that he wrote the books he did and that I was attracted to that cover."
The Flashman books were MacDonald Fraser's ticket out of journalism, according to the Telegraph, while the Independent cites a former colleague, who suggests that MacDonald Fraser "was quite critical of changing standards in journalism, when management took over from editors". The BBC also gathers tributes from colleagues, including Kingsley Amis's assessment of him as "a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist".
Over at An Spailpín Fánach, it's the "tone" of the books that's judged to be the secret, "and it's a act of high skill on Fraser's part, in book after book, to keep Flashman likable as an antihero despite all the available evidence. Although a coward to his liver himself, Flashman recognises bravery in others and, while they may have been warmongers and racists and worse, the men that flew the Union Jack from Cape Horn to Bombay were no cowards, whatever else they were. Fraser has done his homework on the era, and the books are rich in historical detail about what was a very fascinating time. But most important of all, Fraser's skills as a journalist superbly convey what it might have felt like to exist in that era, when the Empire was at its height, to the extent that you can almost smell the gunpowder and spices as you enter the kashbah, eyes peeled for danger.
"Reading Flashman has been one of the great guilty pleasures in recent years, even for a poblachtánach Gaelach such as An Spailpín Fánach ... and it's a source of sorrow this New Year's morning that when the warhorse's nostrils flare once more at the sound of the bugle, Sir Harry will no longer be there to wonder how in God's name he's going to get out of this one."
Meanwhile at A Very British Dude, Jackart judges Flashman a "great character", but is keen to remember MacDonald Fraser's other work. "It is the semi-autobiographical McAuslan series of novels which had the greatest impact on my life as they inspired me to join the British Army," he says. "Finally, one cannot attempt an obituary without mentioning Quartered Safe Out Here, which remains a required text at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. This book documents how hard the war was for the forgotten army in the East from the point of view of a Private soldier: ordinary men achieved extraordinary things in paddy fields, jungles and hills fighting a fanatical enemy to a standstill, despite lacking the support of the European theatre."
At the Church of Virus, Blunderov laments the loss of the "perennial hope of just one more Flashman adventure. Or could there be a posthumous packet of papers lurking undiscovered somewhere?"
But it is perhaps Donal 'The Gurrier" Murphy who best sums up the early mood: "Goodbye Flashman; you dashing, cowardly, misogynistic, randy old imperialist. I'll miss you."
· Read the Guardian's news story, obituary, and John Sutherland's blogpost.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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