THE RIGHT BOOKS

Demolishes bowdlerized history A view of our noble ancestors bottom up, so to speak, which is a view no civilized people ought to neglect” (from a review of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman, from The Washington Post Book World); “He pulls the rug out from all those tough, fearless English adventurers from Bulldog Drummond to James Bond” (from a review of Royal Flash, in the New York Times); “. . . We can learn more about why the English behave like the English, and what things were really like in the glorious days before the unions were powerful and the market was common” (Stefan Kanfer, The New Republic). The point is that the Left adores Sir Harry Paget Flashman, brigadier general, VC, KCB, KCIE, etc. (known first to literature as the beastly bully and drunk of Tom Brown’s School Days) and has delightedly followed the publication of the Flashman papers, now in their eighth volume of publication, as edited by George MacDonald Fraser, a professional author resident on the Isle of Man.

Flashman’s accounts of his adventures throughout Queen Victoria’s Empire (and elsewhere) corroborate entirely—so left-wing admirers believe —the revisionist history of recent times, according to which the nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed the exploitation (in some instances, quite literally, the rape) of Third World peoples and individuals by Europeans who were, despite the hero-worshipping descriptions of them to be found in the Bad Old History Books, greedy, cheating, lecherous, and cowardly despoilers; who, with all their fine “breeding,” were cads merely—not even “gentlemen”! A Marxist of my acquaintance, for example, lasciviously devours each new Flashman title, his passions titillated but his heart gladdened to learn that, indeed—as Lenin always told us—this is how it really was! Well, perhaps Flashman is how it was—the further question being: How bad really was it?

Demolishes bowdlerized history A view of our noble ancestors bottom up, so to speak, which is a view no civilized people ought to neglect” (from a review of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman, from The Washington Post Book World); “He pulls the rug out from all those tough, fearless English adventurers from Bulldog Drummond to James Bond” (from a review of Royal Flash, in the New York Times); “. . . We can learn more about why the English behave like the English, and what things were really like in the glorious days before the unions were powerful and the market was common” (Stefan Kanfer, The New Republic). The point is that the Left adores Sir Harry Paget Flashman, brigadier general, VC, KCB, KCIE, etc. (known first to literature as the beastly bully and drunk of Tom Brown’s School Days) and has delightedly followed the publication of the Flashman papers, now in their eighth volume of publication, as edited by George MacDonald Fraser, a professional author resident on the Isle of Man.

Flashman’s accounts of his adventures throughout Queen Victoria’s Empire (and elsewhere) corroborate entirely—so left-wing admirers believe —the revisionist history of recent times, according to which the nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed the exploitation (in some instances, quite literally, the rape) of Third World peoples and individuals by Europeans who were, despite the hero-worshipping descriptions of them to be found in the Bad Old History Books, greedy, cheating, lecherous, and cowardly despoilers; who, with all their fine “breeding,” were cads merely—not even “gentlemen”! A Marxist of my acquaintance, for example, lasciviously devours each new Flashman title, his passions titillated but his heart gladdened to learn that, indeed—as Lenin always told us—this is how it really was! Well, perhaps Flashman is how it was—the further question being: How bad really was it?