Fraser, George MacDonald

born 1925

British novelist.

He trained as a journalist and served as deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald (1968–69). The success of his first novel, Flashman (1969), led him to become a full-time writer. In it and subsequent novels filled with historical colour and detail, the bully of Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays is his hero. Recent novels include Black Ajax (1998) and Flashman and the Tiger (2000). He has also written screenplays.

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▪ 2009

      British writer

born April 2, 1925 , Carlisle, Cumbria, Eng.

died Jan. 2, 2008 , Strang, Isle of Man

was best known for his series of 12 comic historical novels, written in the form of an extended memoir, about the exploits of Harry Flashman, a hard-drinking, womanizing, vain, and cowardly character who played a leading role in many major events of the 19th century. The novels came from Fraser's imagining the adult life of the bully Flashman in the Thomas Hughes classic novel Tom Brown's School Days (1857). The first novel in the series, Flashman: From the Flashman Papers, 1839–1842, was set in Afghanistan and appeared in 1969. A memoir of Fraser's wartime (1943–47) experiences, Quartered Safe Out Here, appeared in 1992. After World War II, Fraser went into journalism, and he eventually served (1964–69) as the deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald (now The Herald). Besides the Flashman novels, Fraser wrote five other historical novels, three books of short stories, and a scholarly study of the Anglo-Scottish border reivers, as well as a number of screenplays. He was made OBE in 1999.

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