Flashman Flash for Freedom! Flashman in the Great Game

For George MacDonald Fraser the bully Flashman was easily the most interesting character in <i>Tom Brown's Schooldays</i> and imaginative speculation as to what might have happened to him after his expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness ended in 12 volumes of memoirs in which Sir Harry Paget Flashman - self-confessed scoundrel liar cheat thief coward -'and oh yes a toady' - romps his way through decades of nineteenth-century history in a swashbuckling and often hilarious series of military and amorous adventures. In <i>Flashman</i> the youthful hero armed with a commission in the 11th Dragoons is shipped to India woos and wins the beautiful Elspeth and reluctantly takes part in the first Anglo-Afghan War honing a remarkable talent for self-preservation.<i>Flash for Freedom! </i>finds him crewing on an African slave ship hiding in a New Orleans whorehouse and fortuitously running into rising young American politician Abraham Lincoln.<i>..</i>