Louis Badolato
Lieutenant General
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2005
- Messages
- 17,217
Yes, I finally gave in and joined the K&C Collectors club. I had to get the Flashman figure. He is my second favorite character from historical fiction (after fellow George MacDonald Fraser creation Dand MacNeil) and my third favorite fictional character (after F. Paul Wilson creation "Repairman Jack").
You gentlemen don't have any idea what you are missing if you don't read the Flashman books, they take you on the most entertaining (and for the most part amazingly historically accurate) rampage through 19th Century military history. The basic gist of the series is that the bully from the book "Tom Brown's School Days", who got thrown out of the school "Rugby" for drunkeness, ends up talking his father into buying him a commission in the fashionable "11th Hussars" (who have just returned to the UK from service abroad in India, and whom Harry is convinced will see no action in the foreseeable future). After he gets kicked out of the regiment by that blockhead James Brudenell, the 6th Earl of Cardigan, for dueling (he cheats, getting the toady who loads the guns to palm the bullet intended for his opponent's gun) and marrying a mill owner's daughter (a real shotgun wedding, after his bubble headed beauty of a wife tells her sisters about sleeping with him on the banks fo the Clyde - right where Andy Neilson grew up) he ends up in India, and participates in Elphinstone's disasterous retreat from Kabul in the Aghan War (he is the mythical second european officer to make good his escape) in a swashbuckling adventure ill suited for a cad, whoremonger, coward and bully such as Flashman. From then on, whereaver there is an unanswered question in 19th Century military history, from the Old West in the United States to China, from the frozen steppes of Russia to the steamy jungles of Africa, Flashman is there to provide the answer! I can't thank Andy enough for doing this - I have been begging him for figures from this series and from the MacNeil/MacAuslan series for years!
Andy Neilson of K&C worked with Mr. MacDonald Fraser's daughter in an add agency in the early 70's, and actually had coffee with Mr. MacDonald Fraser (who is also one of Andy's favorite authors).
You gentlemen don't have any idea what you are missing if you don't read the Flashman books, they take you on the most entertaining (and for the most part amazingly historically accurate) rampage through 19th Century military history. The basic gist of the series is that the bully from the book "Tom Brown's School Days", who got thrown out of the school "Rugby" for drunkeness, ends up talking his father into buying him a commission in the fashionable "11th Hussars" (who have just returned to the UK from service abroad in India, and whom Harry is convinced will see no action in the foreseeable future). After he gets kicked out of the regiment by that blockhead James Brudenell, the 6th Earl of Cardigan, for dueling (he cheats, getting the toady who loads the guns to palm the bullet intended for his opponent's gun) and marrying a mill owner's daughter (a real shotgun wedding, after his bubble headed beauty of a wife tells her sisters about sleeping with him on the banks fo the Clyde - right where Andy Neilson grew up) he ends up in India, and participates in Elphinstone's disasterous retreat from Kabul in the Aghan War (he is the mythical second european officer to make good his escape) in a swashbuckling adventure ill suited for a cad, whoremonger, coward and bully such as Flashman. From then on, whereaver there is an unanswered question in 19th Century military history, from the Old West in the United States to China, from the frozen steppes of Russia to the steamy jungles of Africa, Flashman is there to provide the answer! I can't thank Andy enough for doing this - I have been begging him for figures from this series and from the MacNeil/MacAuslan series for years!
Andy Neilson of K&C worked with Mr. MacDonald Fraser's daughter in an add agency in the early 70's, and actually had coffee with Mr. MacDonald Fraser (who is also one of Andy's favorite authors).
