Susan Crosland
Audiobook
Flashman
By George MacDonald Fraser (Read by Rupert Penry-Jones)
HarperCollins 4 Cassettes £13.99 order from our bookshop
Few historical novels equal this one for sex, bravura, and wit. ‘I can look at the picture above my desk,’ Harry Flashman reflects, ‘and see a young officer who is tall, masterful, roughly handsome and a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward and, oh yes,’ (he gives his good-humoured chuckle), ‘a toady.’ Expelled from Rugby for drunkenness, he joins Lord Cardigan’s Hussars and at 19 quickly makes his name through courage and bribery. Forced to marry a beautiful blue-eyed maiden who has responded enthusiastically to his penchant for seduction, he welcomes the Hussars’ posting to Afghanistan. What follows is utterly gripping, especially because we know the author has done his research and the events are real. We have a vivid portrait of the Afghan (capable of friendship only as long as it is convenient); the gruesome deaths of captured British officers; the hideous revenge of a tribal chieftain’s wife whom Flashman has unwisely bedded. Unforgettable is the description of the British retreat from Kabul in winter, the army and its camp-followers, all doomed by the folly of its commander. Rupert Penry-Jones’s skill in bringing each individual to life makes the mounting suspense at times nearly unbearable.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger