No Flash in the pan: remembering George MacDonald Fraser.(APPRECIATION)

TEN years ago I saw Lady Thatcher "frit" (a Lincolnshire slang term meaning "frightened" that she once flung across parliament at the Labour party). She was seated next to me at a National Review Institute dinner on the topic of "The Hero Today" or some such. And she was intimidated by the speaker immediately preceding her.

He was George MacDonald Fraser, novelist, memoirist, journalist, soldier, and, above all, creator of the great Victorian anti-hero, Brig. Gen. Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE; Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur; U.S. Medal of Honor; and San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth, 4th Class.

MacDonald had been invited because I and other NRI organizers were fans of the Flashman novels and wanted to meet their author. Our cover story was that the inventor of the greatest anti-hero in literature must have something interesting to say about the modern status of the hero. And we were bang right.

Fraser, who in conversation was a mild and charming man with a nice line in understated humor, was a dynamo on the platform. He began lightly, with a few self-deprecatory jokes, but he was soon developing a powerful critique of the victim as hero in a Britain that had changed from a nation of stoics to one of Dianafied sentimentalists. Beautifully written and illustrated with exactly the right topical examples, Fraser's speech held the audience as if in a trance.

Lady Thatcher turned to me, chairman for the evening, and said: "I can't possibly follow this. Anything after Mr. Fraser can only be an anti-climax."

Well, I knew she had a good speech ready. Also, Lady Thatcher could get a standing ovation from a conservative audience for reading the telephone book. So I reassured her. Besides, I had been paying close attention to Fraser and I thought I could see where he was going to end up.

"Anyway it's out of our hands," I said. "I think Mr. Fraser is going to introduce you himself." Sure enough, he turned towards her and said: "But it is some consolation that even in this unheroic age ... when so much of my nation's worthy past is devalued--in such a time it is comforting to remember that not so long ago there was someone who was in no doubt what it meant to be British, and stood firm when it mattered, at the time of the Falklands. It can't have been easy; there were faint hearts and dissenting voices.... Anyway, she stood firm, as precious few men would have done; she did not go wobbly. And for that, on behalf of a damfool generation, and in the language of the XIVth Army, I'd like to say, 'Shabash, memsahib.' Which, being translated, means, 'Bravo, lady.'"