Flashman at the Charge
Описание книги
Coward, scoundrel, lover and cheat, but there is no better man to go into the jungle with. Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.Celebrated Victorian bounder, cad, and lecher, Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., returns to play his (reluctant) part in the charge of the Light Brigade in this of the critically acclaimed Flashman Papers.As the British cavalry prepared to launch themselves against the Russian guns at Balaclava, Harry Flashman was petrified.But the Crimea was only the beginning: beyond lay the snowbound wastes of the great Russian slave empire, torture and death, headlong escapes from relentless enemies, savage tribal hordes to the right of him, passionate females to the left of him…Then, finally, that unknown but desperate war on the roof of the world, when India was the prize, and there was nothing to stop the armed might of Imperial Russia but the wavering sabre and terrified ingenuity of old Flashman himself.
Оглавление
George Fraser MacDonald. Flashman at the Charge
Copyright
How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?
Dedication
EXPLANATORY NOTE
If you enjoyed Flashman At the Charge, check out these other great George MacDonald Fraser titles
APPENDIX I: Balaclava
APPENDIX II: Yakub Beg and Izzat Kutebar
Footnotes
NOTES
About the Author
The FLASHMAN Papers (In chronological order)
The FLASHMAN Papers (In order of publication)
Also by George MacDonald Fraser
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
The following piece was found in the author’s study in 2013 by the Estate of George MacDonald Fraser.
‘How did you get the idea of Flashman?’ and ‘When are we going to get his U.S. Civil War memoirs?’ are questions which I have ducked more often than I can count. To the second, my invariable response is ‘Oh, one of these days’. Followed, when the inquirer is an impatient American, by the gentle reminder that to an old British soldier like Flashman the unpleasantness between the States is not quite the most important event of the nineteenth century, but rather a sideshow compared to the Mutiny or Crimea. Before they can get indignant I add hastily that his Civil War itinerary is already mapped out; this is the only way of preventing them from telling me what it ought to be.
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‘Trust me,’ says I, and went back to our table. ‘Now, Sam Snooks, just you pop those about for a moment.’ He was looking quite perky, I noticed, what with the booze and, I suspect, a fairly bouncy little spirit under his mamma’s boy exterior. He seemed to have forgotten his fleecing at any rate, and was staring about him at the fellows playing at nearby tables, some in flowery weskits and tall hats and enormous whiskers, others in the new fantastic coloured shirts that were coming in just then, with death’s heads and frogs and serpents all over them; our little novice was drinking it all in, listening to the chatter and laughter, and watching the waiters weave in and out with their trays, and the markers calling off the breaks. I suppose it’s something to see, if you’re a bumpkin.
I went over to where Cutts was just demolishing Speed, and as the pink ball went away, I says:
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