My Passion With John Habergham: Getting lost in the exhilarating adventures of Fraser’s Flashman

Time and again I come back to the works of George MacDonald Fraser, the author best known for the brilliant Flashman series.

His book Quartered Safe Out Here, a personal memoir of the Second World War in Burma, is the finest I have read about men in combat and, in my view, the authentic voice of the British soldier in action.

MacDonald Fraser has a wonderful ear for dialect and incredibly evocative descriptive powers.

The Candlemass Road is another of his books I read as a place of retreat when life is tough.

If I were ever to give up my day job, then I should write the script for and produce a film version of The Candlemass Road. It would be so easy: the dialogue speaks for itself and would drive the film along. Perhaps his literary powers are at their height in The Flashman Papers. With Flashman at the charge you feel that you are there at the charge of the Light Brigade though his wonderful sense of humour means it is hard not to laugh out loud at Flashman’s exploits.

The idea of the Flashman stories, written as though MacDonald Fraser has discovered and edited the papers of a 19th Century cavalry man, is clever and so compelling that many people, particularly in the US, were famously taken in by the ruse believing Flashman to have been a real person.

The Flashman books are not simply amusing reads they are useful in business. MacDonald Fraser places his hero at the centre of great historical events so that these are also first class historical novels from which I learnt a considerable amount.

A few years ago I went to a business meeting in Belgium. Initially it was hard work, but my Belgian contact mentioned he had been to Samarkand and, from my Flashman knowledge, I was able to ask if he had visited the mosque there, which broke the ice.

My colleague was amazed. Afterwards, he asked how I knew about such a thing. “You should read Flashman,” I replied.

It is clear that MacDonald Fraser had no time for touchy, feely emotion showing – if you have a job to do get on with it.

Reading Quartered Safe Out Here I yearn for that era when there was more decency and stiff upper lip.

In later years, he was pilloried for his non-PC views. But how many of us agree with, for example, his admiration for the British Empire as a great civilising force?

I for one. And he has a healthy cynicism for the motives of today’s politics and politicians.

Though I never met George MacDonald Fraser, he comes across as a decent, honourable man of integrity who would have been interesting company. It is sad to think that there will be no more Flashman.