Flaman gets up to crazy shot again. This time he's failing upward during the Charge of the Light Brigade. For a smart guy he sure can be dumb sometimes.

OK: my suggestion is that you really should, if you have a taste for history, suspense, adventure, foreign culture, and raw (both black AND bawdy...though bawdy just ISN'T the word) humor, and you're not a prig or prude, read a Flashman novel. Read them in chronological or publication order--Wikipedia will easily reveal either--I'm doing the latter. FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE (the Charge of The Light Brigade) is the best I've read so far, barely nosing out FLASH FOR FREEDOM (which takes place largely in America).

FLASHMAN: NERVOUS FLATULENCE UNDER FIRE


“Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.


When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!”

- Taken from ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, by Alfred Tennyson


The not wholly untalented Alfie certainly had an uncanny knack for turning a phrase, making the hearts of his fellow countrymen collectively swell with pride for their boys’ comportment during the lowest point in the Crimean debacle. But!

Would he still have put it this way, had he hypothetically been afforded the opportunity to catch up on the memoirs - however fictitious they might be - of that highly decorated British horseman, Harry Flashman? Why, that, my friends, would take some doing.

For while the gent was whistling Dixie like nobody’s business, everyone’s favorite scoundrel is considerably less concerned with putting an ennobling sheen on the often tawdry reality of military engagements. In fact, he does his utmost to shatter any and all illusions, not in the least the ones about himself, a man who's viewed as a valiant hero by all back in Albion:

“It was an inferno of bursting shell and whistling fragments, of orange flame and choking smoke; a trooper alongside me was plucked from his saddle as though by an invisible hand, and I found myself drenched in a shower of blood. My little mare went surging ahead, crazy with pain. […] even in that hell of death and gunfire, I remember, my stomach was asserting itself again, and I rode yelling with panic and farting furiously at the same time. I couldn't hold my horse at all; it was all I could do to stay aboard as we raced onwards, and as I stared wildly ahead I saw that we were a bare few hundred yards from the Russian batteries.

The great black muzzles were staring me in the face, smoke wreathing up around them, but even as I saw the flame belching from them I couldn't hear the crash of their discharge—it was all lost in the fearful continuous reverberating cannonade that surrounded us. There was no stopping my mad career, and I found myself roaring pleas for mercy to the distant Russian gunners, crying stop, stop, for God's sake, cease fire, damn you, and let me alone.”

A coward’s honesty, even if repellent at first glance and yes, even when we are firmly aware these memoirs were only meant to be found after Flashy’s death, is honesty nonetheless. It’s this that makes the character so absolutely refreshing, even if he’s a scumbag of the highest order, drenched in sleaze. He’s a callous, lecherous egotist, but at least he knows it, intimately so, and doesn’t mind categorically telling us, over and over again.



To more critical readers, the Flashman novels would soon appear formulaic, and they'd be right, but by God are they masterfully put together little pleasures. Fraser’s control of this particular flavour of fast-paced, high-octane, fun adventure writing with romantic flourishes is undeniable, and -thus far - reaches something of a high note with ‘Flashman at the Charge’. A seemingly impossible task to achieve, given what a triumph ‘Flash for Freedom’ was. Could it get even better, I wonder?

Harkening back to the very beginning of the Flashman saga, actual warfare – as always vividly rendered, making you smell the cordite drifting in the air- once again makes up a substantial part of the book, and introduces a great antagonist for Flashman, the particularly vicious Count Ignatieff, a thoroughly bad egg even by his standards, which to be sure he will be forced to"break" at a later time. Perhaps it will involve Ignatieff's preferred instrument for the torture/execution of his "useless" serfs, a rather nasty piece of equipment called the Russian knout.




"I'd be hard pressed to call myself a man who abides by moral principles, but few things are sweeter than poetic justice, don't you find?", I can already hear Flashman exclaim, while he's enthusiastically swinging to-and-fro.

There's a void of sorts in my life, left after our haughty hussar ( oh, how he utterly redefined the very concept of a bastard in that first book.. ) was somewhat softened by Fraser, most likely to make him more palatable to audiences.

However, without any reservations I’ll gallop along with him, to whatever realm, whatever historical conflagration he decides to plunge Flashman into next.

Lead the way, old bean.

I always find myself wondering, at the start of a Flashman book, what powerful women he will manage to seduce and how many euphemisms he will employ to describe the act.

A self-described coward, Flashman often experiences that moment of exhilaration when he's cheated death yet again and one or more of his comrades wasn't so lucky.

The egomaniacs that are always looking to wrap Harry Flashman up into a web of intrigue are scary, dangerous and amusingly quirky, and they almost always have flaws that make it easier for him to escape.

A special highlight this time was the chance meeting, in a prison cell where he was thrown by Russians bent on invading Afghanistan and India, between Flashman and two tribal leaders who demonstrated true courage and a sense of humor.

Flashman shows up in the Crimea and takes part in all the action from the Battle of Alma to the Thin Red Line, the charge of the Heavy Brigade and the Charge of the Light Brigade. He is captured by the Russians after the last one, then held captive in Russia at a nobleman's house. We get GMF's point of view of the Russians and Russian serfs. Flashman manages to escape to Central Asia where we're given a history lesson in the brutal conquest of it by the Russians. Very well written and informative. One of the best Flashman books.