1. Flashman
Expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, Harry Flashman buys a commission in Lord Cardigan’s 11th Hussars and begins constructing the reputation that will conceal his cowardice. After a duel and an inconvenient marriage to Elspeth Morrison, he is sent to India and then Afghanistan, where his…
2. Royal Flash
Flashman’s affair with the celebrated adventuress Lola Montez brings him into conflict with the young Otto von Bismarck. Several years later Bismarck abducts him and forces him to impersonate a Danish prince whose marriage is expected to influence the politics of the fictional German duchy of…
3. Flash for Freedom!
A rigged card game and political embarrassment place Flashman aboard the Balliol College, a slave ship commanded by the brutal classicist John Charity Spring. The voyage carries him from Liverpool to West Africa and across the Atlantic, where he participates in trafficking enslaved people before the…
4. Flashman at the Charge
Flashman tries to avoid the Crimean War but is assigned to mentor a young German relative of Queen Victoria. The appointment takes him to Balaclava, where he witnesses the Thin Red Line, the Heavy Brigade and the confused orders that send the Light Brigade towards the…
5. Flashman in the Great Game
At Balmoral, Lord Palmerston sends Flashman to India to investigate warnings of discontent among East India Company soldiers. Travelling in disguise, he enters Jhansi and the court of Rani Lakshmibai, then moves through a country where rumour, religious grievance and political annexation are turning military tension…
6. Flashman’s Lady
A cricket match at Lord’s introduces Flashman and Elspeth to the gambler and pirate prince Sulieman Usman. When Elspeth is abducted, Flashman follows her through Singapore and Borneo, where James Brooke’s campaigns against river piracy force him into fighting he would rather avoid. Elspeth’s own diary…
7. Flashman and the Redskins
In 1849 Flashman escapes New Orleans by joining Susie Willinck’s wagon train to California. Cholera, Comanche attack and the loss of their guide leave him responsible for travellers he plans to abandon. After reaching Santa Fe he falls among scalp hunters, survives an Apache reprisal and…
8. Flashman and the Dragon
In Hong Kong in 1860, Flashman accepts money to escort what he believes is an opium shipment into Canton and discovers that he is carrying weapons for the Taiping rebels. British officials convert his attempt to escape blame into an intelligence mission, sending him through Shanghai…
9. Flashman and the Mountain of Light
Flashman is sent into the Punjab disguised as a legal agent while the Khalsa army dominates the unstable Lahore court. He becomes entangled with Maharani Jind Kaur, the child ruler Duleep Singh and ministers whose rival plans alternately encourage and restrain war with the East India…
10. Flashman and the Angel of the Lord
Fleeing India after another sexual scandal, Flashman reaches the United States and is seized by people who know his earlier identities from the slave trade. Abolitionists associated with the Underground Railroad pressure him to enter John Brown’s organisation, while competing agents seek to use the proposed…
11. Flashman and the Tiger
This collection contains three episodes from Flashman’s later career. In The Road to Charing Cross he assists the journalist Henri Blowitz at the Congress of Berlin and later travels on the Orient Express, where Bismarck forces him into a plot involving the threatened assassination of Emperor…
12. Flashman on the March
In 1867 Flashman reaches Trieste after escaping Mexico and accepts a profitable commission to escort silver to Robert Napier’s army in Abyssinia. His reputation causes Napier to send him beyond the British lines to negotiate with regional opponents of Emperor Tewodros II, transforming a transport job…