I would like to join my contentions colleague Sam Munson in hoisting a tumbler of single-malt to salute the passing of George MacDonald Fraser, the crusty old Scot who produced a brilliant dozen of the Flashman novels.

Fraser has never really gotten his due. Another historical novelist of 19th century warfare—Patrick O’Brian—has received far more critical huzzahs. That is because his Aubrey/Maturin novels are more self-consciously literary, with relatively little action and lots of introspection, dialogue, and description. By contrast, Fraser’s books gallop along at the pace of a runaway mustang, with incident piled atop incident to keep the reader’s attention, many of them violent or salacious. There is also a humorous, mocking tone to Fraser’s work, a bit reminiscent of Thackeray, which contrasts with the somewhat dour mood of the Aubrey/Maturin books.

This is by no means meant to be an indictment of O’Brian, who was undoubtedly a novelist of great merit. Probably greater merit, in fact, than Fraser. But Fraser was more fun to read. And he was no less meticulous in his reconstructions of the past. A reader interested in Victorian history could do a lot worse than to pick up the Flashman series, which contain detailed descriptions of conflicts ranging from the U.S. Civil War to the First Afghan War. Flashman was a Victorian Zelig or Forrest Gump who showed up conveniently enough at every important event between 1840 and 1900.

In some ways, Fraser actually outdid most historians (and I say that as a historian myself): He captured the conversation and perspective of various historical characters in a way that is almost impossible to do for a conventional historian, who can’t embellish on the limited sources available. If there is a modern writer with a better ear for Victorian slang, I have yet to read his or her work.

One of the clever things about Fraser’s writing is that, since he started out in the Age of Aquarius (1969 to be exact), he made sure to gird himself against charges of racism, imperialism, and the like by making his protagonist, Harry Flashman, an anti-hero. The conceit of the books is that Flashman is a consummate coward who through a combination of luck and unscrupulous scheming becomes known as a great hero—winner of the Victoria Cross, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and every other honor known to 19th century man. Yet a careful reader of the books, especially the later ones, will see that for all his protestations of buffoonery, Sir Harry often does in fact act the hero.

While Fraser gently pokes fun at the conventions of G.A. Henty and other “boy’s own” authors who glorified the British Empire, it is pretty clear that he in fact shared many of their pro-imperial prejudices. Like great satirists from Swift to Waugh, Fraser, though he was not in their class by any stretch, was essentially a conservative who managed to poke fun at various poltroons while upholding the age-old order of things.

His views were evident in his first-rate memoir of his days serving in the British army in Burma in World War II: Quartered Safe Out Here. Although written decades after the fact, it paints a convincing picture of how a young soldier reacted to his first taste of combat. It also gives his robust, old-fashioned views on a number of questions. I don’t have my copy in front of me, but this Daily Telegraph obit gives a good summary:

He was particularly firm in his conviction that the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima was justified, believing that among the lives it had saved had been his own.

Nor did he have much time for fashionable attitudes about the emotional delicacy of soldiers and their need for counselling. His experience, in what he acknowledged was another age, was that war was a job that needed to be done, one accomplished by his generation without relish but with a common sense and resolve since vanished from the public spirit.

We will not see his like again, and more’s the pity.