Fraser's integration of his fictional character with historical events is brilliant and the novels are worth reading just as history, though they are much more. Sadly, Flashman has never gotten the memorable film treatment he deserves. Fraser defended Richard Lester's 1975 production of Royal Flash, but Malcolm MacDowell was miscast as the robust Flashman, and Lester's direction was too surreal and over-the-top and distracts from the story. Fraser deserves a better Flashman movie as a memorial.

Fraser also wrote some very good historical novels including the short but riveting
Black Ajax and The Candlemass Road and The Steel Bonnets which are set on the Scottish border and provide a great look at the history of the unique border society. The Reivers which was published just a couple of months ago, uses that same setting for humor in the comic opera style of his earlier novel The Pyrates, with mixed success. It's a fun read, but the mixture of history and modern idiom is nothing if not bizarre and makes the novel hard to really get a grip on. In some ways it's quite brilliant, but it's also distracting. Rather like reading history as told by the Evening Standard.

Fraser did leave us with two excellent memoirs. Quartered Safe Out Here is a fairly straightforward but very informative account of his experiences in Burma during World War II. Light's On at Signpost is a more recent release and combines reminiscences of his time working on movies with political observations of contemporary Britain. In it Fraser writes as a voice for his generation, the last one to grow up when Britain was truly an empire. He was a great traditionalist, and his criticism of Britain's drift away from its values and history is very effective. Fraser argues powerfully against the dilution of British national character and the abandonment of traditions for a modernity which is dehumanizing and offers nothing of real value to replace what has been lost.

Above all, Fraser was a great storyteller. I wish there were more tales of Flashman or MacAuslan in our future, but at least the ones he gave us are good enough to read again and again. If you haven't read Fraser go out and start with Flashman and if you're already familiar with his work, read him all over again — because we're not likely to see his equal again in our lifetimes.