It’s true, isn’t it, that Flashman was named after a character in Tom Brown’s Schooldays? If so, I think that’s pretty cool.
The character Lord Flashheart in the Blackadder series is derived from Flashman (even if his first appearance, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, antedates Flashman’s life by about 250 years).
I read some of the Flashman books many years ago, at the suggestion of a girlfriend who had very good taste in books. I must get back to them again some day.
More than named after. Flashman’s openly and honestly lifted entirely from Tom Brown in all his drunken bullying caddishness. Other characters from Tom Brown appear in the Flashman series, including Flashman’s snivelling offsider (forget his name), Scud East, Tom himself and possibly the headmaster, Arnold (both a literary and a historical figure!). Plus there are numerous references back to the events of the book, beginning right at the start of the first Flashman.
I guess you could say they take place in the same thinly fictionalised universe. It’s all a bit of an in-joke - twisting the honest young Empire-builders of Hughes’ book into the cads and the incompetent fools of the Flashman books.
For all the Flashman fans in here - I also love the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien. Historical novels with a bit more adventure, but still quite a bit of comedy…
Flashman – every other inch a gentleman! I’ve been reading those books since the 1970’s; glad to hear that at least one more is coming out. Great mixture of weaknesses and strengths. Abject cowardice and total selfishness (except for apparently really loving his wife) but with a great ability to bluff his way through things, and of course the major talents of languages, horses and fornication.
If you’re a completist, you should also read Fraser’s Mr. American, in which the elderly Flashman appears as a third-person character. Good book in its own right, too – the main character represents the end of an era in the American West, and the England he emigrates to is changing just as profoundly, with the optimistic Edwardian years ending and the Great War on the horizon.
Flashman On The March - Just finished it. Not bad…not bad at all. Another imperial backwater, not the Civil War or the other adventures we have been waiting for, but still, a pretty good read. Keep writing, George!
If you’re a real completist, you should also read Black Ajax, the story of Tom Molineaux, the real-life boxer and ex-slave who was the first black boxer {and title contender} in England, and possibly the first black sporting hero in history. It’s set in the Regency, and told as a series of recollections from participants in Molineaux’s life, although the interviewer always remains silent and anonymous.
A fantastic {and stylistically breath-taking, especially when the likes of William Hazlitt are interviewed} account of early boxing and the aristocratic and sporting set in Regency England, it also has a prominent role for Buckley “Mad Buck” Flashman, Molineaux’s patron and, of course, Flashy’s father: he’s almost as much of a womanising cad as his son…