William George Keith Elphinstone

1782–1842

William George Keith Elphinstone was a British army officer who commanded the Kabul garrison during the First Anglo-Afghan War. Elderly and indecisive, he failed to control negotiations and the retreat of January 1842, which ended in the destruction or capture of most of the column.

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

In non-fiction, William George Keith Elphinstone 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 George Keith Elphinstone (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…

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