Adventures in Bookland: Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser

Flashman at the Charge

It was PG Wodehouse who likened his first reading of Flashman to Keats’ experience of reading Homer in Chapman’s translation, although I can safely say that Flashy is unlikely to ever hold his silence, even on a peak in Darien – he’d be looking for a likely woman or an escape route. The whole point of Flashman is that, despite his being a cad, a bounder, a coward and a cheat, yet, in the madness of the Crimean War, his cowardice takes on a certain honesty. Indeed, given the fact that Flashman contrives to take part in the charges of both the Heavy and the Light brigades – the latter with his bowels erupting in a fanfare of farts – there is a case for calling him the bravest man there: one who knows fear and yet still carries on. Thankfully, just when it seems like Flashy might be turning into a proper hero, he does something truly appalling and the reader breaths a huge sigh of relief.