quote:

Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE 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 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 at the slightest incentive, bullies and beats servants with gusto, beds every available woman, carries off any loot he can grab, gambles and boozes enthusiastically, and yet, through a combination of luck and cunning, ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.

The books are like James Bond set in the 19th century -- and hilarious to boot. Flashy (as his friends and we fans call him) interacts with historical figures like Bismarck, Lincoln, Queen Victoria, Wellington, General "Chinese" Gordon, Custer et al and is present at Harper's Ferry, Little Big Horn, The Charge of The Light Brigade, The Sepoy Mutiny, and many other legendary events. So the books are not only wonderfully entertaining, but also, in a way, sort of (don't tell anyone I called them this) educational (shhhh!).

My favorite in the series is Flash For Freedom (which takes place in pre-Civil War NO and Mississippi) but I'd start out with the first book, Flashman. After that you can really read them in any order. There are 13 books in the series; I reread them every 4 or 5 years.