At the end of the novel, Flashman claims that his escape with Cassy across the Ohio River was the inspiration for the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, with the names altered and the story focusing on the slave Cassy rather than Flashman. George Hiscoe and Thomas Little - A pair of slave traders who Flashman is given to by the Mandevilles, charged with delivering him and Cassy to a plantation. Both are killed by Cassy in the course of their escape. Sullivan - A slave-trader aboard the Balliol College. He is shot and seemingly killed by Spring, but Flashman and the Tiger retcons this by mentioning that he was murdered by Sebastian Moran. The NYT article is instead about the publisher's ( World Publishing Company) concerns that 10 of the 34 reviewers of Flashman had ignored the publicity material that stated the book was a novel. Instead, these reviewers had praised the memoir for its "ring of authenticity", but "the only difficulty with these encomiums for Sir Harry Flashman is that he is a complete fiction". [2] The confusion is somewhat understandable because "Fraser has been lauded for his meticulous research, thrilling plotting and sensitivity to the realities of history and human nature, as well as his refreshingly non-PC attitudes. ,,, and "his peerless gift for dialect and slang., but it is the device of the series’ outspoken and morally dubious protagonist that makes such accounts stand out." [3] The Bad - Flashman can't be described as an anti-hero is an unabashed coward who will do anything to ensure his survival. He's a racist, an sexual misogynist. The portrait of the slave trade is dark, scary and very disturbing. The language gave me shudders and left me feeling cold. Flashman's attitude to the slaves and women he encounters is negative and he treats them as objects to be used.

Fraser really revels in his un-PC approach to the telling of these stories but this one is particularly hard on a sensitive 21st century soul like myself. Annette Mandeville - The wife of a Southern slave owner who has an affair with Flashman before framing him for rape when the affair is discovered, causing her husband to sell him as a slave in revenge. She later reappears in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord as an agent of the Kuklos conspiracy, who ultimately kill her for betraying them. These books are often called "un-PC"—fair enough. But I'd make the case that they are far from glorifying or romanticizing the attitudes of the time; instead they have a sneaky way of making you feel guilty by association, of recognizing uncomfortable parallels with the modern world. Good-bye,’ says Cassy, and that was the last I ever saw of her – or of the two thousand dollars we had had between us.” At any rate, he lost no opportunity of airing his Latinity to Comber and me, usually at tea in his cabin, with the placid Mrs. Spring sitting by, nodding. Sullivan was right, of course; they were both mad. You had only to see them at the divine service which Spring insisted on holding on Sundays, with the whole ship’s company drawn up, and Mrs. Spring pumping away at her German accordion while we sang ‘Hark! the wild billow’, and afterwards Spring would blast up prayers to the Almighty demanding his blessing on our voyage, and guidance in the tasks which our hands should find to do, world without end, amen. I don’t know what Wilberforce would have made of that, or my old friend John Brown, but the ship’s company took it straight-faced – mind you, they knew better than to do anything else.”Flash for Freedom may not be as outrageous as the original (which for its sheer devil-may-care indulgence in all manners of sordidness even now is still fresh in my mind), but it’s up there. As a piece of historical fiction oddly reminiscent of old boy adventure books, yet with a definite MATURE audience in mind (one can’t stress this enough), The Flash series remains awfully tough to beat. The editorial annotations which accompany - and often correct - details of the stories Flashman divulges in his memoir are just icing on the cake for a history buff like me. Never can get enough of them.

After a scandal involving cheating and assault, England becomes too hot for young Flashman and his father-in-law sends him off. Flashman suddenly realizes that he’s on a slave ship captained by a lunatic bound for Africa to take on a cargo of slaves, and he’s horrified. Not so much about slavery but that running slaves is proscribed in 1848 and he’s fearful of the ship being seized by an in­ter­dict­ing navy. They transport a cargo to the Americas but offload it before being captured by the U.S. Navy. Flashman manages to pose as a Royal Navy spy, then escapes before having to give testimony. He flees up the Missis­sip­pi in a variety of guises; re­luc­tant­ly escorting escaped slaves; subsequently becoming a slavedriv­er himself for a while before the slaveowner has Flashman sold into slavery; escaping across a frozen river to be saved from slave­catch­ers by Con­gress­man Abraham Lincoln; before ending up in a New Orleans courtroom. Mr. Mandeville - Annette's husband, who sells Flashman into slavery after she accuses him of rape. By the time of Flashman and the Angel of the Lord he has died of alcohol poisoning. Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, this book describes the bully Flashman from Tom Brown's School Days. The papers are attributed to Flashman, who is not only the bully featured in Thomas Hughes' novel, but also a well-known Victorian military hero. The book begins with an explanatory note detailing the discovery of these papers, the supposed controversy concerning their authenticity and Fraser's hinted at vindication through an article from The New York Times from 29 July 1969. [1]urn:oclc:record:1391529820 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier flashforfreedomf0000fras Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s20xrgtr1v7 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0214653587 Lccn 70870009 Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9801 Ocr_module_version 0.0.21 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA409386 Openlibrary_edition

Peter Omohundro - A slave-catcher who recognises Randolph while Flashman is trying to smuggle him out, leading to Flashman abandoning his charge. He later reappears in Flashman and the Redskins, where he recognises Flashman in a bar and tries to have him arrested, but is killed by Spring. In my review of "FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME" (1975), I had stated that there are at least six novels from George MacDonald Fraser’s series about the adult adventures of Harry Flashman, the cowardly bully from "Tom Brown’s School Days", that I consider among the best that the author has written. One of these six novels happens to be "FLASH FOR FREEDOM!". Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-05-22 09:17:35 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40944624 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierBut there are two humorous scenes that truly stood out for me. One involved Flashman’s description of Captain Spring and his wife: By the third book you'd think it would have been pounded into my skull that Flashman is Not a Nice Person. Usually in fiction the lovable scoundrel eventually does something altruistic, but Flashman is consistently horrible. I'm not surprised when he fails to be moved by the suffering around him, unless it inconveniences him, but I keep expecting him to get sentimental about one of the women he becomes involved with. It still startles me that while he occasionally admits to fond feelings, he never even hesitates to betray or abandon one of them to save his own skin.

The Good - hard to find anything edifying in this story. However, considering the current climate in the US, the denial of systemic racism by the right, the mistreatment of Negroes by the police, Republican governors passing anti-voting laws and denying Critical Race teaching in schools, it's probably not a bad book to be read as it describes the slave trade and treatment of slaves in the harshest possible terms. Even though it's fiction, there are interesting factoids provided at the end of the story. His description of the period is excellent (accurate? well, I can't actually verify it as I'm not quite that old), you can see it in your mind very clearly. The appearance of Abe Lincoln made me feel better, one of the positives in the book. Not that Flashman is subject to the morals of normal men... he manages to find his way on the ship, and shows he is still all about looking after himself.Cassy - A young female slave who helps Flashman escape from his imprisoners in Mississippi. Courageous and passionate she bemuses Flashman by her mixed judgments of his character. A run in with the US Navy after they unload most of the slaves at Honduras lands Flashman and the crew in the USA, but he has a scheme, and ends up on the side of the law, but not for long. The Underground Railroad engage his services to accompany a man up to Canada, but even then circumstances conspire against Flashy, and he must make an escape again. From here, the story is far from over.