Sunday, December 28, 2014

Top Ten George MacDonald Fraser

In no particular order
1) Flashman - not my favourite of the Flashmans but it was the one that set up the world and the character and demands respect
2) Flash for Freedom - time has made me appreciate this one more - the energy, scholarship and cleverness of the exchanges
3) Flashman at the Charge - a true epic, two novels in one: Flashman in the Crimea and then in India, with some of GMF's best writing
4) Flashman in the Great Game - for me, the greatest Flashman, with the tightest plot and most vivid sequences
5) Flashman and the Redskins - the last great Flashman, with some brilliant writing and the most moving emotionally believe it or not (I'd also put in for Flashman's Lady but wanted to spread the love a little)
6) McAuslan in the Rough - all the McAuslan stories are entertaining, honestly there's not much between them, but I picked this because of the particularly moving last story where Dand McNeill and McAuslan leave the army on the same day
7) The Pyrates - a gloriously full swashbuckling pastiche full of invention and scholarship - Fraser tried to make lightning strike twice with The Reivers but that only served to show how much his writing had deteriorated
8) The Hollywood History of the World - the book that got me on to GMF, a highly entertaining look at what Hollywood did to history
9) Octopussy - Fraser made an imprint with his scripts for The Three Musketeers but this is my favourite of all the movie's he's credited on as writer (even if I'm not sure of the extent of his contibution)
10) Quartered Safe Out Here - aside from some right wing ranting, this is a masterpiece, Frasers's magnum opus

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