History? Got it in a Flash

How George MacDonald Fraser helped me get an 'A'
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser Photograph: Terry Smith/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Alone in the Scottish mountains, with no television or friends to distract from the long, dark winters, my childhood view of the world beyond the hills lay only in the books piled up in a back room; in novels by writers such as Alistair MacLean and Wilbur Smith. I picked my way through the worn covers and came across Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser.

Later I would find out that MacDonald Fraser, who died aged 82 last week, had turned into an old grouch, punctuating his years in tax exile on the Isle of Man with angry outbursts against the encroaching powers of the European Union.

At the time, though, Sir Harry Flashman, a brutal cad disinterred from the pages of Tom Brown's Schooldays, led me through a world I could only dream about. With each passing page of each passing book came the desire to see wondrous places such as Afghanistan and Madagascar.

What MacDonald Fraser had that others - especially Jeffrey Archer - did not was history. The history rang true - about the pirates of the African coast or the soldiers who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade.

Now, my exam results had been unimpressive. I preferred setting fire to anthills and murdering hooded crows to schoolwork. Yet O-levels and the Scottish equivalent, 'O' grades, were approaching. Part of the history exam could include a 'thesis' on any part of history I chose. Having just read Flashman in the Great Game, I chose the Indian Mutiny of 1857, despite the siege of Lucknow happening about as far from the Lairg sheep sales as it is possible to imagine.

I wrote to the National Army Museum, the Indian High Commission and anyone else I could think of. Kind responses came back from archivists sensitive to my enthusiasm. Yet, always, at the heart of the project was the joy of this paperback, with its background that was, as fact, never proven wrong.

My subsequent 'A' astonished everyone who knew me. Later still, I became The Observer's Africa correspondent.