How he survived his adventures and inevitable flights from Thugs and Tsarist agents, Eastern beauties and Cabinet ministers, and kept his skin intact, is a mystery as remarkable as The Flashman Papers themselves. For Flashman, plumbing new depths of anxious knavery in his role as secret agent extraordinary, saw far more of the Great Mutiny than he wanted to. The Flashman Papers 1856 58, Volume Five What caused the Indian Mutiny? The greased cartridge, religious fanaticism, political blundering, yes but one hitherto unsuspected factor is now revealed in the furtive figure which fled across the Indian scene in 1857 with such frantic haste: Flashman. George MacDonald Fraser’s famous Flashman series appearing for the first time in B format with an exciting new series style, ready to please his legions of old fans and attract armies of new ones. But the Crimea was only the beginning: beyond lay snowbound wastes of the Great Russian slave empire, torture and death from relentless enemies, headlong escapes, savage tribal hordes to the right of him, passionate and beautiful females to the left of him, and finally that unknown but desperate war on the roof of the world, when India was the mighty prize and there was nothing to stop the armed might of Imperial Russia but the wavering sabre and terrified ingenuity of old Flashy himself. As the British cavalry prepared to launch themselves against the Russian guns at Balaclava, Harry Flashman was not so much dismayed as terrified. ‘Forward the Light Brigade’ Was there a man dismayed? Indeed there was. The illustrious Flashy gets up to his old tricks in another installment of The Flashman Papers.

Mr american george macdonald fraser