re:Has any non-Muslim ever made the pilgrimage to Mecca?
Is George MacDonald Fraser’s character Flashman in his Flashman series of books based on this Richard Burton?
Bite your typing fingers!
IIRC, “Flashman” actually appears in the “classic” novel Tom Brown’s School Days, where he’s an unsavory type. George MacDonald Fraser took the briefly-mentioned character nd built a series around him, presenting him as (I think)a scheming, cowardly, raconteur. I never read the books, but I saw the Salkind movie that came out circa 1974. Burton was nothing like the Flashman character in that film. Read any of his works, or Fawn Brodie’s biography “The Devil Drives”, or watch the movie The Mountains of the Moon. Or read Philip Jose Farmer’s novel “To Your Scattered Bodies Go”.
Aw, RBS, you wouldn’t ask that if you’d ever read any of the books. 
Flashy’s the total Anti-Hero, don’t you know. The word that springs to mind is “a**hole”, not “hero”. No way would Flashy have the ‘nads to do something like sneak into Mecca. Now, he might find himself, due to circumstances beyond his control, accidentally transported to the Most Holy Place, but you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be whining and cussing and peeing his pants with fright every step of the way, and then afterwards bragging about the whole thing down at the officers’ mess.
“Scheming cowardly raconteur”. Yep. That about sums it up. 
Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment.
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
Has any non-Muslim ever made the pilgrimage to Mecca? (08-Jun-2001)
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
The one facet of Flashman that might have been modeled on Burton was his great facility with languages. It was one of Flashy’s only three self-professed talents, the others being 1) horsemanship, and 2) boinking (of course, Flashman himself expressed this last one a little differently). Flashman’s linguistic capabilities of course frequently came in handy in advancing Fraser’s plots.