![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Smashing picture, but.
Jan. 5th, 2008 09:16 pmThe Grauniad asks: Should we mourn Flashman?
I must say I'm more inclined to mourn Pte McAuslan, J, the dirtiest soldier in the world, and his long suffering superior officer, Dand MacNeill, not to mention the rest of the regiment immortalised in three collections of short stories about life in a Highland regiment stationed in North Africa at the end of the Second World War. Screamingly funny, all of them, and in an unobtrusive way rather interesting accounts of the Scots, or at least of Scots men of various kinds and conditions. They also contain one of the best ceilidhs and almost certainly the funniest game of golf known to literature (whaur's yer PG Wodehouse noo?), and a series of curious yet believable characters and events. The language, too, is wonderful, though I suspect it might account for the lack of attention which the English obituries gave to the stories.
Gaiman fans, though, might note that one of the stories in 'The Sheikh and the Dustman' (a hilarious account of poaching and illicit distilling in Perthshire) is the source for an incident in Sandman - and I have a suspicion that Pratchett's Nic Mac Feegle owe quite a lot to Fraser's Scots soldiery.
If you google 'McAuslan', the first hit you get is a rather posh-looking Canadian microbrewery. I think I'd have difficulty trusting their products, though, associations with the Tartan Caliban being too strong...
I must say I'm more inclined to mourn Pte McAuslan, J, the dirtiest soldier in the world, and his long suffering superior officer, Dand MacNeill, not to mention the rest of the regiment immortalised in three collections of short stories about life in a Highland regiment stationed in North Africa at the end of the Second World War. Screamingly funny, all of them, and in an unobtrusive way rather interesting accounts of the Scots, or at least of Scots men of various kinds and conditions. They also contain one of the best ceilidhs and almost certainly the funniest game of golf known to literature (whaur's yer PG Wodehouse noo?), and a series of curious yet believable characters and events. The language, too, is wonderful, though I suspect it might account for the lack of attention which the English obituries gave to the stories.
Gaiman fans, though, might note that one of the stories in 'The Sheikh and the Dustman' (a hilarious account of poaching and illicit distilling in Perthshire) is the source for an incident in Sandman - and I have a suspicion that Pratchett's Nic Mac Feegle owe quite a lot to Fraser's Scots soldiery.
If you google 'McAuslan', the first hit you get is a rather posh-looking Canadian microbrewery. I think I'd have difficulty trusting their products, though, associations with the Tartan Caliban being too strong...