Harry Flashman's equally fictional father, Henry Buckley Flashman, appears in Black Ajax (1997). Despite their wealth, the Flashmans "were never the thing" Flashman quotes the diarist Henry Greville's comment that "the coarse streak showed through, generation after generation, like dung beneath a rosebush". In Flashman, Flashman says that his great-grandfather, Jack Flashman, made the family fortune in America, trading in rum, slaves and " piracy too, I shouldn't wonder". Paget was one of the heroes of Waterloo, who cuckolded the Duke of Wellington's brother Henry Wellesley and later-in one of the period's more celebrated scandals-married Lady Anglesey, after Wellesley had divorced her for adultery. He also provided Flashman's first and middle names, as Hughes's novel had given Flashman only one, using the names to make an ironic allusion to Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey. Flashman's origins įraser gave Flashman a lifespan from 1822 to 1915 and a birth-date of 5 May. Nevertheless, through a combination of luck and cunning, he usually ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.
Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who often runs away from danger.
Fraser decided to write the story of Flashman's later life, in which the school bully would be identified as an "illustrious Victorian soldier", experiencing many of the 19th-century wars and adventures of the British Empire and rising to high rank in the British Army, to be acclaimed as a great warrior, while still remaining "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward-and, oh yes, a toady." In the papers – which are purported to have been written by Flashman and discovered only after his death – he describes his own dishonourable conduct with complete candour. In Tom Brown's School Days (1857), Flashman is portrayed as a notorious Rugby School bully who persecutes Tom Brown and is finally expelled for drunkenness, at which point he simply disappears. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the Richard Lester 1975 film Royal Flash.
Harry Flashman appears in a series of 12 of Fraser's books, collectively known as The Flashman Papers, with covers illustrated by Arthur Barbosa and Gino D’Achille. Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE is a fictional character created by Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) in the semi-autobiographical Tom Brown's School Days (1857) and later developed by George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008). Cover illustration of Flashman by Gino D’Achille (2005 printing)
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