Harry Paget Flashman

Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE is a fictional character created by George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008), but based on the character "Flashman" in Tom Brown's School Days (1857), a semi-autobiographical work by Thomas Hughes (1822–1896). Harry Flashman appears in a series of 12 of Fraser's books, collectively known as The Flashman Papers. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the Richard Lester 1975 film Royal Flash.

In Hughes' 1857 book, Flashman (a relatively minor character) is portrayed as a notorious bully at Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Fraser decided to write Flashman's memoirs, in which the school bully would be identified with an "illustrious Victorian soldier" experiencing many 19th-century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in the British Army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and, oh yes, a toady." Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who often runs from danger in the novels. Nevertheless, through a combination of luck and cunning, he usually ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.

Fraser gave Flashman a lifespan from 1822 to 1915 and a birth-date of 5 May. Flashman's first and middle names were created for the character as Flashman's first name is not given in Hughes's novel. Fraser uses them to make an ironic allusion to Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, and one of the heroes of Waterloo, who cuckolded the Duke of Wellington's brother Henry Wellesley and later—in one of the period's more celebrated scandals—married Wellesley's ex-wife.

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