Fraser kept at his ripping yarns for almost 40 years; Richard Lester brought the rogue to the screen in 1975's ROYAL FLASH, with Malcolm McDowell. Fraser cowrote OCTOPUSSY, penned Lester's MUSKETEERS movies (and RED SONJA) and a non-fiction survey I really enjoy, 1988's THE HOLLYWOOD HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

Sad news indeed. Among historical novelists he was without peer. The rollicking humor and adventure of his Flashman novels rest on a treasure trove of period detail. From the caliber of Colt revolvers in the 1830s, to the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1822, to the Marylebone Cricket Club's code of laws, nothing escaped Fraser's keen eye.

The key reason that we can't expect a faithful screen version of any of the Flashman books is that no studio would build a film around a racist, sexist, sadistic hero.

The New York Times obit points out that Fraser based the character on a sadistic bully named Flashman from the 1857 novel, "Tom Brown's School Days," basically taking that character and showing him as a grown-up and making him the hero!

In that regard, I highly recommend the 1971 BBC mini-series TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS (available on DVD), which at 225 minutes gives us more of young Harry Flashman than do the 1940 or 2005 versions.

. . . sad to realize we will never fill in those missing years from THE FLASHMAN PAPERS . . .

Yes, the volume I think American fans longed for the most was the account of Flashy's service in both the Union and Confederate armies.

Sorry to hear this -- I was a big fan. :(

I especially liked Fraser's talent for getting into the byways of history -- my favorite of the Flashman novels is Flashman's Lady, which I won't spoil for anyone who hasn't read it but is a really wonderful book. I also applaud Fraser's knack of grafting modern sensibilities onto old-time swashbucklers.

Very interested to hear he wrote RED SONJA, which in and of itself makes me want to see it. Is it any good?

doug

Good...well, if you take all the '80's sword & sorcery flicks RED SONJA would probably be in the upper ranks. That's as far as I'm willing to commit myself.

One thing that makes the books work so well is something that I suspect most filmmakers would shy away from; the grit, horror, and genuine sense of outrage amongst the hijinks and heaving bosoms. Fraser was a Tory and a sometime apologist for Empire, at least when it was exemplified by men like Sir Colin Campbell or James Brook (he had plenty of scorn for the Cardigans and Raglans), but he took the atrocities committed on both sides seriously. The novels are always funny, but for the most part they are also serious adventure stories, no matter how unheroic Flashy himself may be (although in Flashman's Lady he actually behaves pretty damn well, despite being terrified the whole time). I don't think it's a coincidence that the one early adventure that was an outright spoof (of The Prisoner of Zenda) and didn't feature ghastly battlefield violence, Royal Flash, is the one that Lester chose to adapt.

There are a lot of genuinely heroic characters in Fraser and he takes many of them seriously, even while Flashman doesn't (well, that's not right; Flashy takes heroism seriously because he knows it can get him killed). He's also capable of genuine nuance, showing the horror and waste of burning down the Summer Palace while sympathizing with the British officer who orders it. His Afghan, Indian, Chinese and Apache rebels and guerillas can be as savage and cruel as the Thugs in Gunga Din , but at other times they're shown as sympathetic and justified in their actions. Fraser doesn't shy away from showing Indian mutineers slaughtering British women and children or from showing the British tying captured Sepoys to their guns and sadistically blowing them in half (something that almost happens to Flashy when in native disguise).

The best books in the series are either the ones that have the occasional undercurrent of moral seriousness and moments of genuine horror, or the ones that, like Flashman's Lady, work as balls-out adventure (not that the excerpts from Elspeth's diary aren't hilarious).

And for Fraser in full historical serious mode, I highly recommend his beautifully written short novel The Candlemass Road, set on the Scots border during the reign of Elizabeth, and about the relationship between an exiled lady-in-waiting and the "broken man" (kind of a Scots Ronin) she hires to deal with tje rival clan that's killing and extorting protection money (the original meaning of the term "black mail") from her tenant farmers. It would make an excellent film (I believe that Fraser first conceived it as treatment he pitched at Sean Connery back in the early 70s).