In a letter to World Authors, our featured author wrote: "My parents, a Scottish doctor and nursing sister, agreed with Dr. Johnson that the best sight a Scot ever sees is the high road to England -- at least, they agreed with him as far as Carlisle, where they settled after the First World War." He was born there on 2 April 1925 and was sent to Carlisle Grammar School, where "I performed so indifferently that they decided to send me to Glasgow Academy, where my examination showing was, if anything, worse. However, I did win two prizes, for English and general knowledge, learned to play Rugby and cricket with cunning if not enthusiasm, received a cup for throwing the cricket ball, read impressive quantities of historical fiction, and became probably the only Laertes in theatrical history to defeat Hamlet -- admittedly, only at a rehearsal. These qualifications were not considered sufficient for entrance to the medical faculty of Glasgow University, and I went into the army, a willing conscript, in 1943. I was occasionally a lance-corporal, served as an infantryman with 17th Indian Div of XlVth Army in Burma, and was finally commissioned in the Gordon Highlanders." He relates his wartime experience in Quartered Safe Out Here and his later service is the basis for his very funny but also very thought-provoking short stories about Private McAuslan, the 'dirtiest soldier in the British Army'.

"After the war I was a sports and general reporter with the Carlisle Journal where I married Kathleen Hetherington, a reporter from another paper. We went to Canada together, and after a brief period in Toronto where I almost sold a set of encyclopedias to a man with a broken washing-machine, we got jobs as reporters in Saskatchewan. After a year we came home, our first son was born, and I worked as a reporter and sub-editor on the Cumberland News before we moved to Glasgow in 1953. On the Glasgow Herald I was on ... [various] sub-editing jobs ... before becoming features editor, and deputy editor from 1964 to 1969. Our daughter and second son were born in 1953 and 1957 respectively.

Advent of an Author and Screenwriter
"I had been writing on and off since the age of five, and thanks to my wife's encouragement I persevered in the hope of becoming a novelist; my first book, Flashman, was published in 1969, and I gave up newspaper work and devoted myself to being a free-lance author." And a very successful author he became as a glance at Fraserıs bibliography will demonstrate. Among his best known works are nine sequels to Flashman which deal with some very interesting venues of the 19th century ranging from the steppes of Russia to the river valleys of Borneo, China and Africa and the Great Plains of the American West.

Few of Fraser's works are about Scotland but one that is most noteworthy is his first non-fictional work -- The Steel Bonnets which appeared in 1971. It is a factual study of the Anglo-Scottish border reivers ‹ "the raiders, cattle thieves, and protection racketeers on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border who preyed on each other and feuded continually until they were stopped by the lawful and more efficient brutalities of James I early in the seventeenth century." A more recent book, Candlemass Road, which is a "fictional supplement" of the themes he introduced in The Steel Bonnets.

Fraser has written a number of screenplays for both for cinema and TV as shown in his bibliography. In a letter I asked him about several things that had struck me about his works. One of these concerns his interest in American movies which are the focus in both The Pyrates and The Hollywood History of the World. He responded --- "Hollywood and its picture of the U.S. was well ingrained in the British consciousness before 1939. My screen-writing began in 1973, with the Musketeer movies, and while film work has taken me to Hollywood frequently, I do the actual writing at home -- except when Iıve been rash enough to visit pictures on location (Yugoslavia, Sicily, Hungary, Spain, etc.) and have been put to work -- theyıll always find something for a writer to do if he shows up during production." I asked if he had sought such assignments; he replied -- "No, they have always approached me . . ."

In the World Authors letter he styles himself as a "sentimental Presbyterian, ... firmly opposed to all party politics and lists his recreations as snooker, picquet, talking to wife, history, singing." In a private letter he wrote that "my early years seem to be pretty well covered in the World Authors piece ... For the rest, I work away in the Isle of Man where my wife and I live. The children are all in mainland Britain; Simon, our oldest, is a Sheriff (judge) in Scotland; Caro, a barrister, has had two novels published and a third coming out; Nick worked in the theatre and is now project director in London (which conveys very little; he master-minded the setting-up of a great dinosaur exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has become a great tourist attraction). We have eight grandchildren." In response to my enquiry as to whether there might be more Flashman papers in the offing, he replied -- "I have no intention of quitting on Flashman, but I havenıt decided where to go next, and I never tip my hand in advance, anyway, not even to my publisher."