Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE (1822–1915) is a fictional character created by George MacDonald Fraser, but based on the character "Flashman" in Tom Brown's Schooldays, a semi-autobiographical work by Thomas Hughes.
In Hughes' book, Flashman is the notorious bully of Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Twentieth century author George MacDonald Fraser had the idea of writing F...
more
Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE (1822–1915) is a fictional character created by George MacDonald Fraser, but based on the character "Flashman" in Tom Brown's Schooldays, a semi-autobiographical work by Thomas Hughes.
In Hughes' book, Flashman is the notorious bully of Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Twentieth century author George MacDonald Fraser had the idea of writing Flashman's memoirs, in which the school bully would be identified with an "illustrious Victorian soldier": experiencing many 19th century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in the British Army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining by his unapologetic self-description "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady." Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who runs from danger or hides cowering in fear, betrays or abandons acquaintances at the slightest incentive, bullies and beats servants with gusto, beds every...
less
