The Complete McAuslan

George MacDonald Fraser’s hilarious stories of the most disastrous soldier in the British Army – collected together for the first time in one volume.

Private McAuslan, J., the Dirtiest Soldier in the Word (alias the Tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division’s answer to the Pekin Man) first demonstrated his unfitness for service in The General Danced at Dawn. He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling or destroying his equipment, through the pages of McAuslan in the Rough. The final volume, The Sheikh and the Dustbin, pursues the career of the great incompetent as he shambles across North African and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces.

His admirers know him as court-martial defendant, ghost-catcher, star-crossed lover and golf caddie extraordinary. Whether map-reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night or confronting Arab rioters, McAuslan’s talent for catastrophe is guaranteed. Now, for the first time, the inimitable McAuslan stories are collected together in one glorious volume.

Reviews

‘Thanks to Fraser’s passion for history, his rare gift for rattling narrative and his infectious delight in robust, rollicking language, we can rejoice in a work of genius worthy of being ranked with P.G. Wodehouse – there can be no higher accolade’—Daily Telegraph

‘Written with the kind of unaffected vigour which has characterised the greatest British humorists, these stories do for the Scots what Flann O’Brien did for the Irish and P.G. Wodehouse for the English’—Daily Mail

‘The third McAuslan volume should certainly be among the first books you pack this or any other holiday season’—The Times

‘One takes leave of these characters with real and grateful regret’—Sunday Times

‘It’s a while since I enjoyed a book so much, and once I’d finished it, I felt like starting it all over again’—Glasgow Evening Times

‘It’s great fun and rings true: a Highland Fling of a book’—Eric Linklater, author of The Wind on the Moon

‘The greatest book about soldiers since Ian Hay wrote The First Hundred Thousand … MacDonald Fraser is magnificent’—Eric Hiscock, author of Around the World in Wanderer III

‘As well as providing a fine assortment of treats, George MacDonald Fraser is a marvellous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist’—Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim

About the author

Best known as the author of the famous Flashman Papers, George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008) served in both the Border Regiment in Burma during the war and in the Gordon Highlanders. After the war he worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada, and became deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. In addition to his novels and works of non-fiction, he wrote numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers, Royal Flash and the James Bond film, Octopussy, and worked on scripts including Force 10 from Navarone and Superman II.