George MacDonald Fraser

Biography

Fraser was born to Scottish parents in Carlisle, England on 2 April 1925. His father was a doctor and his mother a nurse. It was his father who passed on to Fraser his love of reading, and a passion for his Scottish heritage.

Fraser was educated at Carlisle Grammar School and Glasgow Academy; he later described himself as a poor student due to "sheer laziness". This meant that he was unable to follow his father's wishes and study medicine.

War service

In 1943, during World War II, Fraser enlisted in the Border Regiment and served in the Burma Campaign, as recounted in his memoir Quartered Safe Out Here (1993). After completing his OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit) course, Fraser was granted a commission into the Gordon Highlanders. He served with them in the Middle East and North Africa immediately after the war, notably in Tripoli. In 1947, Fraser decided against remaining with the army and took up his demobilisation. He has written semi-autobiographical stories and anecdotes of his time with the Gordon Highlanders in the "McAuslan" series.

Journalism

After his discharge, Fraser returned to the United Kingdom. Through his father he got a job as a trainee reporter on the Carlisle Journal and married another journalist, Kathleen Hetherington. They travelled to Canada, working on newspapers there, before returning to Scotland. Starting in 1953, Fraser worked for many years as a journalist at the Glasgow Herald newspaper, where he was deputy editor from 1964 until 1969. He briefly held the title of acting editor.

Novelist

In 1966, Fraser got the idea to turn Flashman, a fictional coward and bully originally created by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown's School Days (1857), into a hero, and he wrote a novel around the character's exploits. The book proved popular and sale of the film rights enabled Fraser to become a full-time writer. He moved to the Isle of Man where he could pay less tax. Covers for the Flashman novels were illustrated by Arthur Barbosa.

There were a series of further Flashman novels, presented as packets of memoirs written by the nonagenarian Flashman looking back on his days as a hero of the British Army during the 19th century. The series is notable for the accuracy of its historical settings and praise it received from critics. For example, P.G. Wodehouse said of Flashman, "If ever there was a time when I felt that 'watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet' stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman."

The first Flashman sequel was Royal Flash. It was published in 1970, the same year that Fraser published The General Danced at Dawn, a series of short stories which fictionalised his post-war military experience as the adventures of the rather unassuming "Dand" MacNeill in a Scottish Highland regiment. This series of short stories is noted for the strong and strange characters surrounding McNeill, including an aged and prototypical colonel, a perfect-soldier regimental sergeant-major, a Wodehousian adjutant, an active and dedicated pipe sergeant, a die-hard Algerian revolutionary, various blackguards and spivs, and, most memorably, Private John McAuslan, the dirtiest soldier in the world. Featuring games of golf, scrapes, and run-ins with the police both military and civil, the transfer of the die-hard to the French, and McAuslan's various disasters, these works form a picture of the British army in the period immediately after World War II.

The following year Fraser published a third Flashman, Flash for Freedom!, as well as a non fiction work, The Steel Bonnets (1971), a history of the Border Reivers of the Anglo-Scottish Border.

Screenwriter

The film rights to Flashman were bought by Richard Lester, who was unable to get the film funded but hired Fraser to write the screenplay for The Three Musketeers in Christmas 1972. This would be turned into two films, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, both popular at the box office, and it launched Fraser as a screenwriter. For the next 20 years, Fraser alternated between writing novels and film scripts; he also worked as a script doctor.

Following Flashman at the Charge (1973), Fraser wrote the screenplay for the movie Royal Flash (1975), also directed by Richard Lester. It was not a success at the box office.

There was another collection of Dand McNeill stories, McAuslan in the Rough (1974), then Flashman in the Great Game (1975) and Flashman's Lady (1977). He was hired to rewrite Crossed Swords (1977) and Force 10 from Navarone (1978). The latter was directed by Guy Hamilton who arranged for Fraser to do some work on the script for Superman (1978). He did some uncredited work on the film Ashanti and wrote an unused script for Tai Pan to star Steve McQueen. He also wrote a biopic of General Stilwell for Martin Ritt which was not filmed.

Fraser tried a more serious historical novel with Mr American (1980), although Flashman still appeared in it. Flashman and the Redskins (1982) was a traditional Flashman and The Pyrates (1983) was a comic novel about pirates. He was one of several writers who worked on the James Bond film Octopussy (1983). Richard Fleischer arranged for him to do work on the script for Red Sonja (1985).

After Flashman and the Dragon (1985) he was reunited with Lester on The Return of the Musketeers (1988) then released a final volume of McAusland stories, The Sheikh and the Dustbin (1988) and did another history, The Hollywood History of the World (1988). When that film book came out he was reportedly working on a science fiction film Colossus and adapting Conan Doyle's The Lost World for TV but either project was filmed.

Following Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990), Fraser wrote a version of The Lone Ranger for John Landis which ended up not being filmed. He did his memoirs of his experiences during World War Two, Quartered Safe Out Here (1992).

He wrote a short novel about the Border Reivers of the 16th century, The Candlemass Road (1993), then Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994) and Black Ajax (1997), a novel about Tom Molineaux, which featured Flashman's father as a support character.

Flashman and the Tiger (1999) consisted of three different Flashman stories. The Light's on at Signpost (2002) was a second volume of memoirs, focusing on Fraser's adventures in Hollywood and his criticisms of modern-day Britain. The latter could also be found in Flashman on the March (2005), the final Flashman, and The Reavers (2007), a comic novel about the Border Reivers in the style of The Pyrates.

Following his death a novel was discovered amongst his papers, Captain in Calico. This was published in 2015.

Honours

George MacDonald Fraser was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999. A traditionalist, he was an Honorary Member of the British Weights and Measures Association, which opposes compulsory conversion to the metric system.

Family

Fraser married Kathleen Hetherington in 1949. They had three children, Simon, Caroline, and Nicholas. He had eight grandchildren. Fraser died on 2 January 2008 from cancer, aged 82.

Flashman novels

The Flashman series constitute Fraser's major works. There are 12 books in the series:

1. Flashman (1969)
2. Royal Flash (1970)
3. Flash for Freedom! (1971)
4. Flashman at the Charge (1973)
5. Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
6. Flashman's Lady (1977)
7. Flashman and the Redskins (1982)
8. Flashman and the Dragon (1985)
9. Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990)
10. Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994)
11. Flashman and the Tiger (1999)
12. Flashman on the March (2005)

Short stories

The "Dand MacNeill" or "McAuslan" stories is a semi-autobiographical series of short stories based on the author's experiences in the Gordon Highlanders, in North Africa and Scotland, soon after World War II. Some of the stories were originally bylined "by Dand MacNeill", a play on the regimental motto BYDAND, meaning standfast:

History

Memoirs

Other novels

Screenplays

Fraser wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for:

Unproduced screenplays

Fraser also wrote the following scripts which were never filmed:

Select articles

Radio

Fraser adapted Flash For Freedom and Flashman At The Charge for BBC radio plays. Fraser was also a staunch critic of political correctness and enlarged upon his views on this matter (and others) on the BBC radio show, "Desert Island Discs."

In film

In the film All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane (2007), the character of Michael (Matthew Zeremes) has an ideal image of a woman, which includes her being a fan of George MacDonald Fraser novels.

In print

Fraser's Flashman at the Charge (1973) was serialized in the April and June 1973 issues of Playboy. The climactic sequence of Flashman in the Great Game (1975) was also excerpted there.