Tom Brown’s School Days and Flashman

The first in George MacDonald Fraser’s uproarious Flashman series and the classic they pay homage to available together for the first time in ebook format.

Uproarious, nefarious and sociable at the same time, Tom Brown is at once the typical boy of his generation and the perennial hero. Tom Brown’s School Days charts our protagonist’s time at Rugby, taking his troubled adolescence when he is savagely bullied by the brutal Flashman, to his departure – with the world at his feet.

In Flashman, meanwhile, George MacDonald Fraser’s inspired spin-off from Hughes’ classic, we see Brown’s tormentor from an entirely different perspective. Expelled from Rugby for drunkenness, and none too welcome at home after seducing his father’s mistress, the young Flashman embarks on a military career with Lord Cardigan’s Hussars.

En route to Afghanistan, our hero hones his skills as a soldier, duellist, imposter, coward and amorist (mastering all 97 ways of Hindu love-making during a brief sojourn in Calcutta), before being pressed into reluctant service as a secret agent. His Afghan adventures culminate in a starring role in that great historic disaster, the Retreat from Kabul.

Reviews

'The Flashman Papers do what all great sagas do – winning new admirers along the way but never, ever betraying old ones. It is an immense achievement.' Sunday Telegraph

‘Not so much a march as a full-blooded charge, fortified by the usual lashings of salty sex, meticulously choreographed battle scenes and hilariously spineless acts of self preservation by Flashman.’ Sunday Times

‘Not only are the Flashman books extremely funny, but they give meticulous care to authenticity. You can, between the guffaws, learn from them.’ Washington Post

‘A first-rate historical novelist’ Kingsley Amis

About the author

The author of the famous Flashman Papers and the Private McAuslan stories, George MacDonald Fraser worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he also wrote numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond film, Octopussy.