oh, bugger...

[winterbadger]

R.I.P., George MacDonald Fraser. Looks like he hung on until his latest book got to print.

I love his adventure fiction (including his screenplays for the Richard Lester films of The Three Musketeers and his marvelous historical novels about the ultimate Victorian bad boy, Sir Harry Flashman), but most of all I love his short stories about life as a junior officer in the Army after WWII (and his short and scattered memoir about his service as an enlisted man *during* the war, in Burma no less).

Good thing I'll be going to the pub tonight--a toast to the memory of a grand curmudgeon and excellent story-teller is definitely warranted.

Comments

[gr-c17.livejournal.com]

Very sad. It's as if we've lost more than just George MacDonald Fraser, but Sir Harry, and the rest as well.

More than one toast I'll warrent.

[sun-in-splendor.livejournal.com]

Sad

Always enjoyed time spent with Flashman.
Mean to read them all in historic/cronologic order someday.
Did he ever finish the series?

[winterbadger]

Well, he certainly alluded to many more adventures than he ever published stories about, in the same way that Conan Doyle slipped little teasers into his Sherlock Holmes (and his Brigadier Gerard) stories. I don't know how many of those he had ever planned on writing up.

He had just published a book called The Reivers, which is apparently a comic adventure novel based on his previous (excellent) history of the bandits of the Anglo-Scottish Border. Should be a good read!

He also appears to have been involved in a video called "Debatable Land", which may be available on DVD, covering the Border. Bryan--we need to find this!