During a fevered bout of covid in mid 2020 I became obsessed with Flashman and Thin Lizzy. For months afterwards I seldom read or listened to anything else. I entered a fantasy world staffed by dual sentinels: Phil Lynott and Harry ‘Flashy’ Flashman. The two became intertwined. Lynott – proud majestic Lynott – bounded through his fantasy vista of grizzled soldiers of fortune, emerald isle warriors, cowboys, New York hustlers, London junkies and casbah mystics in that soulful lackadaisical delivery; the dual leads of Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham conjuring a fantastical realm that spoke equally of 1970s backstreets and 10th century Irish hedgerow, of childlike heroism and villainy, a cinematic romanticism; a beautiful naivety.
But Flashman?
Flashman is a coward. Flashman is a sex addict and borderline alcoholic. He is an arrogant boor and snob. He is an appalling racist. He is an amoral liar, serial cheat, childhood bully and scurrilous chronicler of the worst excesses of the British Empire. He saw out the Boxer Rebellion, Charge of the Light Brigade, Battle of Little Bighorn, Siege of Cawnpore and countless other key historical events as decorated hero despite – unbeknownst to his superior officers – frequently ending up either cowering in mortal terror, beating a hasty retreat or fainting at inopportune moments.
One of literature’s finest anti-heroes, he is the subject and first person narrator of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers novels, each a maximalist bacchanalian feast of sex, violence and scrupulously annotated military history. The Flashman novels offer a form of sheer dunderheaded escapism perhaps unparalleled in 20th century literature, one particularly useful to the convalescent, the miserable or the bored. They offer this because they make scant emotional demand of the reader while presenting a world of mauve, outrageously camp adventure, deep historical wormhole and occasional Throbbing Gristle-esq descent into dank, stark horror.
There is also, as Ronnie James Dio had it in Rainbow’s ‘Stargazer’ “the heat and the rain!”. These are novels of the elements. When unwell, there’s something immensely pleasurable in reading about people going through a worse time than you are, in the pissing rain on a horse, in the same way that reading in bed during a vast thunderstorm is infinitely more satisfying than reading on a beach, simply because you’re not out there.
But while Flashman was his life’s work, the character wasn’t quite the invention of George MacDonald Fraser. Flashy first appeared as the bullying, drunken nemesis of the eponymous Tom Brown in Thomas Hughes’s 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Set in the early 19th century public school system, Hughe’s explored the culture, arcane rituals and latent sadism of Rugby School, exposing a world rife with bullying and snobbery.
Flashman, introduced simply as “school house bully”, …
