Flashman and the Dragon (The Flashman Papers) - Softcover

George MacDonald Fraser OBE was a bestselling historicalnovelist, journalist and screenwriter. Having worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada he is perhaps most famous for his series of Flashman novels and his anti-hero Harry Flashman. In addition to his novels he also wrote numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers and the James Bond film Octopussy. George MacDonald Fraser died in January 2008 at the age of 82.

The delightful cad Flashman stalks again, now through China's 19th-century Taiping Rebellion, in this eighth and perhaps most sparkling volume of his "memoirs." Though a little longer in the tooth, Colonel Flashman, V.C., has lost none of his dash, cunning, amorous propensity or cowardice. His adventures begin when he accompanies a consignment of "opium" (actually guns) to Canton on behalf of a British missionary. Thereafter, as Ambassador Elgin's chief intelligence officer, he gets into a succession of dire scrapes which include being attacked by pirates and falling into the hands first of the ferocious but disciplined Taipings, then of the equally ferocious but decadent Manchu imperialists. At one point he comes within a hair's breadth of having his poltroonery exposed; at other points he finds himself the sexual partner of a Chinese Amazon and, more plaything than partner, of the formidable Imperial Concubine Yi, later empress, to whose treacherous court intrigues he becomes privy. He winds up witnessing Elgin's destruction of Peking's Summer Palace, an act of vengeance described with horrifying vividness. There's a deal of shrewd observation in Flashman, and a deal of solid history in his flamboyant memoirs, factors that add weight to their dazzle.
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