George MacDonald Frazer ;  “Flashman” is an inspired creation. I  often wonder how Frazer must have felt when he stumbled, if that’s the word,on to the idea, with it’s vast range of possibilities. I would guess that  excited  would be too mild a word.

But then, having had the brainwave, ,Frazer goes on to create a  fiction  and sets it in  historical fact in such a uniquely satisfying way, always authentic,never academic,and cleverly gives us a hero who we love in spite of, (perhaps because of),  his deeply flawed personality.Flashman’s narration is another rich pleasure, larded with vivid Victorian slang but never archaic.