What makes a hero?

Spectator, The, Mar 26, 2005 by Mount, Harry

There is no one original Flashman, although Fraser acknowledges there are plenty of people who take after him. "I see Flashy characteristics on the political scene; I won't say where. They haven't got his style. David Niven was keen to play him; he would have made a wonderful Flashman. Or his friend Errol Flynn, who had that shifty quality.'

Bits of Flashman are drawn from Fraser's war service in India and Burma, before he was commissioned in the Gordon Highlanders. 'The army's always had its share of Flashmans.'

But the greatest inspiration for Flashman is Fraser himself. 'I think like him. It's like Charles II - "My words are my own; my actions are my ministers'."' And Fraser, text, has his heroic qualities. At the end of the war in Burma, he came under heavy fire. Two men went down, dead, on either side.'

Fraser dresses like a modern dapper Flashman; he resembles George Cole, bandbox neat in blazer, cheesecloth shirt and cravat. He dons a Russian fur hat to take on the cold wind that smacks into the Isle of Man from the Arctic Circle through the channel between Belfast and the Mull of Galloway. As he trips across the car park with a jaunty gait, waving goodbye, I get a whiff of a 79-year-old Flashman, a man who must once have been frightened, but no less brave for that.

Flashman on the March by George MacDonald Fraser is published by HarperCollins (£17.99).