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. Though not literally the only survivor of the entire column, his arrival became an enduring symbol of the First Anglo-Afghan War disaster.

George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman places William Brydon within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, empire, conquest and resistance, and political ambition and government.

In non-fiction, William Brydon is discussed in William Dalrymple’s Return of a King. William Dalrymple’s Return of a King approaches the subject through empire, conquest and resistance, military command and battlefield decision-making, and court politics and dynastic power.

Series

Series featuring William Brydon (1 series)

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2

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