It’s been a while, and there are some I haven’t read since I quit working at the Library, but I digress. I think you could start anywhere if you bear in mind that:
Flashman is a cowardly womanizer who while running away from a battle will accidentally do something good and come out on top; Flashman at the Charge is atypical of the series. “But by God they were Englishmen”, :rolleyes: when Flashie would usually discount the Charge of the Light Brigade as idiots.
They’re all pretty much self-contained. There are occasional passing references to characters or events from previous books but they wouldn’t hinder a newbie. Each novel is its own story. I would probably recommend reading the first one first and then reading the rest in whatever order you feel like but you won’t get lost or anything if you start with a later book.
Just as a caveat, Flashy is quite a miserable human being at times. He’s not just a loveable rogue or anti-hero, he’s actually a loathesome person – a racist, an abuser of women (he is not above battering women and I can remember at least one rape). He’s a coward, a liar, a snob and basically just an all around scumbag. Some readers find the character maddeningly unsympathetic and unlikeable. He not only gets away with doing horrible things, he often gets unjustly rewarded for them. His only saving grace is his brutal honesty about himself. It works in a very darkly satirical way, and Fraser’s historical accuracy, detail and readability are awesome but be prepared to see evil win a lot.
I really wouldn’t start with Tiger. It isn’t the best book by far, and you’d get the wrong impression of the writing from it.
Start with Flashman, then maybe Flashman at the Charge or Flashman and the Great Game. Then you can move on to Flash For Freedom! and Flashman and the Redskins, which happen back to back (sorta). After that any order will do. 
Yes, and I shouldn’t have compared them like that. They are not just two different characters, they represent different genres. As Flashman says, refering to being carried out dead drunk on a board in Tom Brown’s School Days, “I knew better than to mix my liquor even then.” 
I don’t recall that, but it’s been a while. The only truly vile thing without humor I recall is Killing an Indian lancer who was supposed to protect him.
Throwing a woman from the sled so that he could escape more quickly has a certain black humor to it. I don’t recall what happened to her.
It was in the first novel, Narreeman, the dancing girl.
According to wiki, it was his only rape, though.
His character is somewhat softened over the series, though: in the original Flashman {where the rape occurs} he is a truly despicable human being, but he softens somewhat over the course of the books to being more of a genial scoundrel with a somewhat cavalier attitude to his duty. His saving grace as a character is his total honesty not only about himself - the conceit of the books, for those who haven’t read them, is that they are the private and previously unpublished memoirs of a lauded and lionised hero of Empire, in which he finally sets the official record straight with the truth of his so-called heroism - but about his unflinching and cynical honesty about the world he lived in: he casts a very jaded and cynicallly humourous eye over notions of patriotism, honour, duty and valour, and is brutally realistic about the real motivations behind governments, wars and those who serve them and in them. All the more interesting because Fraser was a decorated WW2 veteran who fought the Japanese in Burma, and writes very authoritatively indeed in a number of other books about military life and his army experiences.
I’ve put the request in for the first book through interloan, so I shall wait for that and return the other one to the library.
I thank you all for your input.
Royal Flash is a great take on the The Prisoner of Zenda, but for the love of Og, avoid the movie!
I dunno. In the last book two years ago set in Ethiopia, he shoved his lover over a waterfall to save himself. But I don’t want to give the impression that he was a bad person.
Pretty much, because they were not written in order. The device is that they were published as new memoirs came to light, and Fraser was always making reference to “perhaps we’ll find that memoir some day” regarding something Flashman said, and then he does and publishes a new book.
I’d start with one of the earlier ones, though. *Flashman at the Charge * was my first one, during the Crimean War.
It’s not that atypical really - Flashy is being interviewed by a Russian shortly after the Charge and is asked what the hell the Light Brigade thought they were doing, and how on earth men could charge the length of a valley into artillery fire without breaking. He mildly says “We’re British cavalry” and observes as an aside to the reader “and it was true, even if no-one had less right to say it than I.”
He remarks earlier in the story on the conduct of the Crimea campaign, and conveys his respect for the fighting men of his country quite unmistakably, putting the blame for everything that went wrong on the incompetence of the men at the top. The political classes thought that all Britannia had to do was turn up with eyes a-glare and the Russians would throw in the towel, and he says that given a Wellington in charge they could have pulled it off. What they actually had was men like Raglan and Cardigan, and Flashman doesn’t mince his words about them. (Flashman hoped to get Cardigan killed after catching him in flagrante with his wife Elspeth earlier in the story, but his luck wasn’t in.)
Flashman does his best to steer clear of trouble as per his usual M.O. but wholly against his will finds himself charging with both the Heavy Brigade and the Light, sandwiching a stand with the Thin Red Line into the day’s events - as tall a military story as you’ll ever hear. And in this book he also ends up foiling a Russian invasion of India, but in his defence he is not in his right mind at the time.
That was almost justified, though: they were both in the torrent, he’d found a branch to hang on to, and she was clinging to his leg. He kicked her loose because he thought she’d bring them both over: hardly chivalrous, true, but it was in extremis and done to save his life. It certainly pales in comparison to feats of pure self-serving malice such as betraying and selling his lover Cleonie to the Apaches for $2000 after she thought she was escaping to freedom with him.
Besides, he actually performs his duty admirably well in Flashman On the March: he doesn’t leave Emperor Theodore even after he’s been freed, choosing to see his assignment through. The younger Flashman would have been skipping for the tall timber without waiting to be asked.
Indeed, the conceit as I see it is that Flashman is able to honestly understand and portray historical events because he’s such a rotter.
Oh, I was not criticizing. I LOVE Flashman.
In addition to his books, Fraser also wrote the scripts for Richard Lester’s versions of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.
And the *Octopussy * James Bond installment.
Aw, damn … I had hoped he had another Flashman caper in him, if not the US Civil War then Gordon at Khartoum, or the Franco-Prussian war.
But oh well, George was old and tired, and certainly owed us nothing. I’m deeply grateful to him for all the enjoyment he’s given us, even if there will be no further packets of the Flashman papers left to publish.
Thanks, Mr. Fraser, and Godspeed.