George MacDonald Fraser

George McDonald Fraser was an expert storyteller and master of the comic novel. His most widely read books chronicle the adult exploits of Harry Flashman (the original cowardly school bully of "Tom Brown's Schooldays"). Though fictionalised, these bawdy adventures are invariably set against an impeccably well-researched and annotated historical background, featuring the dissolute, craven anti-hero in the midst of significant historical events, including the Charge of the Light Brigade, Custer's last stand at the Little Bighorn, the Indian Mutiny, the Opium Wars, the Taiping rebellion, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and Britain's 1868 punitive Abyssinian campaign. Fraser carefully avoided romanticising the Victorian-era, instead adopting an often brutally realistic, yet highly satirical 'warts and all' approach. Fascinating historical characters abound, ranging from Madagascar's black queen Ranavalona to Otto von Bismarck and Abyssinia's self-styled Emperor Theodore II, brought to life by painstakingly researched detail, proof of the old adage that fact is often stranger than fiction. The swaggering, chauvinistic arch-cad, from whose vantage point the books are written, rides his luck from one harrowing crisis to another and continues to be elevated among Imperial Britain's military elite despite his total lack of merit (not to mention morality). Fraser's wit and craftsmanship as a writer have nonetheless made Flashman into a believable, even compelling central character.