Celebrated Victorian bounder, cad, and lecher, Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., returns to play his (reluctant) part in the Taiping Rebellion in the eighth volume of the critically acclaimed Flashman Papers. / The hardback edition of Flashman on the March went straight into the top ten bestseller list / The Flashman Papers have sold over half a million copies in the UK alone / The entire Flashman backlist is in print and available for promotion alongside this new hardback
The author of the famous Flashman Papers and the Private McAuslan stories, George MacDonald Fraser has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he has also written numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond film, Octopussy.
'Thanks to Fraser's passion for history, his rare gift for rattling narrative and his infectious delight in robust, rollicking language, we can rejoice in a work of genius worthy of being ranked with -- there can be no higher accolade -- P.G. Wodehouse' Daily Telegraph 'Farcically outrageous and disgracefully entertaining' Sunday Times
'Thanks to Fraser's passion for history, his rare gift for rattling narrative and his infectious delight in robust, rollicking language, we can rejoice in a work of genius worthy of being ranked with -- there can be no higher accolade -- P.G. Wodehouse' Daily Telegraph 'Farcically outrageous and disgracefully entertaining' Sunday Times
The delightful cad Flashman stalks again, now through China's 19th-century Taiping Rebellion, in this eighth and perhaps most sparkling volume of his ``memoirs.'' Though a little longer in the tooth, Colonel Flashman, V.C., has lost none of his dash, cunning, amorous propensity or cowardice. His adventures begin when he accompanies a consignment of ``opium'' (actually guns) to Canton on behalf of a British missionary. Thereafter, as Ambassador Elgin's chief intelligence officer, he gets into a succession of dire scrapes which include being attacked by pirates and falling into the hands first of the ferocious but disciplined Taipings, then of the equally ferocious but decadent Manchu imperialists. At one point he comes within a hair's breadth of having his poltroonery exposed; at other points he finds himself the sexual partner of a Chinese Amazon and, more plaything than partner, of the formidable Imperial Concubine Yi, later empress, to whose treacherous court intrigues he becomes privy. He winds up witnessing Elgin's destruction of Peking's Summer Palace, an act of vengeance described with horrifying vividness. There's a deal of shrewd observation in Flashman, and a deal of solid history in his flamboyant memoirs, factors that add weight to their dazzle. (April 4)
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