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Copyright
How did I Get the Idea of Flashman?
Dedication
EXPLANATORY NOTE
Discover the rest of The Flashman Papers, with Harry Flashman’s next adventure …
APPENDIX I: The Taiping Rebellion
APPENDIX II: The Orchid
APPENDIX III: The Doctor of Letters of the Hanlin Academy
Footnotes
NOTES
GLOSSARY
About the Author
The FLASHMAN Papers (In chronological order)
The FLASHMAN Papers (In order of publication)
Also by George MacDonald Fraser
About the Publisher
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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‘I reckon,’ says he. ‘But they could be a fine people, for all that. Give ’em someone to lead ’em, to drive ’em, to show ’em how. They got the prime country in creation here – when they find out how to use it. Say, and they’re smart – you know they were civilised while we were still running around with paint on? Why, they had paper an’ gunpowder centuries before we did!’
‘Which they use to make kites and fireworks,’ says I. It was plain he was an old China hand in the making – and after a few weeks’ acquaintance, too. ‘As for their civilisation, it’s getting rottener and more corrupt and decadent by the minute. Look at their ramshackle government—’
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