I have met the Flashman. It was a long time coming. First I had to read the Aubrey-Maturin historical novels by Patrick O'Brian, and when those were done, the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell, and then a few other novels in the vein of old-fashioned adventure and war fighting.

People who knew my not-so-secret recreational reading practices would mention the word Flashman and try to tempt me. I resisted these books by George MacDonald Fraser. That is until now, when I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of gulping down Flashman and Royal Flash. Only ten more to go.

I say guilty pleasure, because the hero of these novels is a paragon of bad behavior. He is a cad, a coward, a dissembler and worse. He's all the things Captain Jack Aubrey or Lieutenant Richard Sharp most definitely are not. They are heroes; Flashman presents a rousing alternative.

All this is great fun. But there is a less attractive facet of Flashman's humorously unattractive personality, a wildly politically incorrect set of behaviors that some readers will have difficulty enduring. Early in the first novel there are scenes in which Flashman beats up the woman he desires, and rapes another. Ouch and double ouch. And like other subjects of Queen Victoria, he's racist as well.

Those disgusting scenes pretty much disqualify the series from polite company, or in fact any company that wants fictional characters to behave themselves.

I looked all over the jackets of these two Flashman novels for any hint that there was trouble inside. Instead, I found blurbs such as "Splendidly entertaining" (Time magazine) and "Hilariously funny" (New York Times Book Review).

In a 2002 memoir the author (who died in January 2008) responded at length to criticism.

"When 30 years ago I resurrected Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes's Victorian novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, political correctness hadn't been heard of, and no exception was taken to my adopted hero's character, behaviour, attitude to women and subject races (indeed, any races, including his own) and general awfulness. On the contrary, it soon became evident that these were his main attractions. He was politically incorrect with a vengeance.

"Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue -- the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them. And no one minded, or if they did, they didn't tell me. In all the many thousands of readers' letters I received, not one objected.

"In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way. This is fine by me. Flashman is my bread and butter, and if he wasn't an elitist, racist, sexist swine, I'd be selling bootlaces at street corners instead of being a successful popular writer.

"... It's not that (these reviewers) dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.

"I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: 'Look, I'm not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I'm in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly... And it is this that alarms me -- the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step."

That is how George MacDonald Fraser defended his Flashman series. It's up to you to decide if you want to dip into these entertaining but troubling historical novels.

For me, I'm soldiering on. The books are great fun, as so many people had told me over the years. I'd enjoy hearing your comments on Flashman.

Aired Sunday June 15, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday June 18, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser. Plume paperback $14. ISBN 0452259614. First published in 1969. This novel contains the above-mentioned episodes of mistreatment of women. It also contains an eery foreshadowing of our current war in Afghanistan. His description of British misadventures there are honest and chilling.

Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser. Plume paperback $15. ISBN 9780452261129. First published in 1970. From Wikipedia: "A pastiche of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda set during the European Revolutions of 1848. The story features Lola Montez and Otto von Bismarck as major characters, and fictionalizes elements of the Schleswig - Holstein Question, 1843, 1847 and 1848. The episode is presented as if Hope fictionalized the 'true' story he heard from Flashman."

The Light's On at Signpost a memoir by George MacDonald Fraser. Published by HarperCollins, London, 2002. Publisher Synopsis: "Fraser has been a newspaperman, soldier, novelist, and screenwriter. Here his reminiscences of those years are interspersed with an angry old man's view of Britain today, featuring blistering attacks on New Labour and Cool Britannia."

Although out of print, The Light's on at Signpost is available in hardcover and paperback from used book vendors. Try http://used.addall.com/Used/ for examples. Or more simply, go to www.addall.com and click on "used."

Fraser wrote a number of non Flashman books, including another memoir, Quartered Safe Out Here, about his experiences as an infantryman in the Border Regiment during the Burma Campaign of World War II. Out of print.

Sources for more information on Fraser and his books:

An interesting interview in which he touches on the PC issue is located here: http://www.biggeorge.co.uk/GMF.htm Here's a quote from the interview:

Q: What about your favourite spot he's gotten himself into?

G.M.F: People ask for a typical example of his behaviour and I think the one that appeals to me most is in: Flashman at the Charge. He's being pursued through the snow in a sledge by Cossacks and he flings his mistress out into the snow to lighten the sledge (laughs). I like that.

Q: I've read them many times and he still doesn't fail to shock me.

G.M.F: Good.

Robert Messenger, Senior Editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote a glowing appraisal of the author for the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120052924968495889.html

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