The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
28.
ROYAL FLASH
From The Flashman Papers, 1842–43 and 1847–48
Edited and Arranged by
GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd 1970
Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1970
George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006511267
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007449507
Version: 2017-11-06
For Kath, again, and for
Ronald Coleman,
Douglas Fairbanks, jun.,
Errol Flynn,
Basil Rathbone,
Louis Hayward,
Tyrone Power,
and all the rest of them
Contents
Appendix I: The Prisoner of Zenda
The second packet of the Flashman Papers—that great collection of manuscript discovered in a saleroom in Leicestershire in 1965—continues the career of the author, Harry Flashman, from the point where the first instalment ended in the autumn of 1842. The first packet described his expulsion from Rugby School in 1839 (as previously referred to in Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays) and followed his subsequent military career in England, India, and Afghanistan; the second packet covers two separate periods of several months in 1842–43 and 1847–48. There is an intriguing four-year gap which the author seems to indicate he has covered elsewhere in his memoirs.
The present instalment is of historical importance insofar as it describes Flashman’s encounters with several persons of international celebrity—including one most eminent statesman whose character and actions may now be subjected to some reappraisal by historians. It also establishes a point of some literary interest, for there can be no doubt that a link exists between Flashman’s German adventure and one of the best-selling novels in the Victorian period.
As with the first packet (entrusted to me by Mr Paget Morrison, the owner of the Flashman Papers) I have confined