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Historical person

William Brydon

1811–1873

William Brydon was a British East India Company assistant surgeon who survived the catastrophic 1842 retreat from Kabul and reached Jalalabad wounded and exhausted. William Brydon is generally dated to 1811–1873.

Though not literally the only survivor of the entire column, his arrival became an enduring symbol of the First Anglo-Afghan War disaster. William Brydon was born in London and died in Scotland.

George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman carries Harry Flashman through the destruction of Elphinstone’s army on the retreat from Kabul and uses the famous story of Dr William Brydon reaching Jalalabad to sharpen its satire of how catastrophe can be converted into heroic legend. William Dalrymple’s Return of a King reconstructs the same retreat from British, Afghan, Persian and Indian sources, placing Brydon among the survivors while challenging the simplified tradition that remembered him as the expedition’s sole man to escape.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring William Brydon (1 series)

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2(80,547)

The Flashman Papers present the supposed memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown’s School Days who becomes a decorated Victorian soldier despite being a coward, liar, opportunist and sexual predator. George MacDonald Fraser places this fictional witness inside documented nineteenth-century…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring William Brydon (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.