George MacDonald Fraser dies

The author, for those that don't know, of the absolutely brilliant Flashman books, as well as a number of other works. I only discovered his writing in 2005, so am still working my way through his novels - Flashman and the Dragon is currently sitting on the shelf awaiting reading, along with a vast pile of nearly twenty other books. But I can say that every single one of the seven Flashman books I have so far read has been excellent - if you haven't read them, I would urge you to do so!

Another great thing about Fraser was that he was a lefty-baiter par excellence. In 2002 he wrote that Britain was "besieged by hordes of alien scroungers, bums, criminals, layabouts and riff-raff", a comment which led the hacks at the Guardian to line him up right alongside Jean-Marie Le Pen on their hate list. His novels also eschew the PC tendencies of the modern literary world - there's no grovelling apologies for the Empire or slavery there, nor did he indulge in the particularly irritating tendency of some historical novelists I have read, to equip their characters with the political, social, and moral attitudes of a modern-day Hampstead-dwelling chatterer.

All in all, a sad day.