George McDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, a series of comic historical novels typically revolving around one of the best-known military disasters of the Victorian era and featuring as their hero a later-in-life version of the cad and bully Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, has died at age 82 of cancer.

Fraser had resided on Man as a political (and tax) exile from socialist Britain for many years.

He served during WWII in the Border Regiment and, after being commissioned an officer, in the Gordon Highlanders. Upon leaving the Army, he worked as a journalist for the Glasgow Herald. In 1969, he published the first of the Flashman novels which soon became a lucrative success.

As the London Times observes:

He had hit on a deceptively simple idea that proved to be a bestselling formula at the end of the Swinging Sixties. The public still wanted to sit down with a good rip-roaring yarn — but did not want heroes. So why not make the central character a cad? A cad the reading public already knew about — Harry Flashman, the bounder of Tom Brown’s Schooldays?

What happened to Flashman after the good Doctor Arnold expelled him from Rugby? Fraser decided that he must have gone into the Army. Bully, liar and coward he may still have been, but the Victorian military authorities did not mind. Or perhaps they were simply too stupid to notice, as he whored and cheated his way around the British Empire. The resulting stories became one of the great tongue-in-cheek achievements of popular fiction.

The standing joke between Fraser and his readers was that these were genuine memoirs: they had been discovered, “wrapped in oilskin” and stuffed into a tea chest, during a house sale at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965. They described how, after a long, eventful life, loved by the ladies and lauded by the Establishment — Flashman was a brigadier-general, a VC, a Knight of the Bath, a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur and, amusingly, holder of the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth — the old scoundrel mused in old age about how he had got away with it: “The ideal time to be a hero,” he wrote, “is when the battle is over and the other fellows are dead, God rest ’em, and you take the credit.”

It was all rollicking nonsense; but it had a sterling quality that went to the heart of many sophisticated readers who like to relax with a rubbishy book provided it is well written rubbish.

The Guardian identifies another basis of the series’ success.

Fraser was intending amusing travesty, but, underneath it all, the author really believed in Britishness. When the chips are down (when sepoys, for example, are murdering women and children in the Indian Mutiny) Flashman is a gallant and decent fellow (and no racist). Flashy, not unflashy Tom, embodies what made the empire work.

The Flashman novels spoke eloquently to the British reader. They articulated that mixture of cynicism, shame, and pride that contemporary Britons felt about Victorian values and Great Britain.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr. was born in Charleston, South Carolina.

He served two tours in Vietnam 1968-1970, receiving multiple awards of both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star. After serving in the US Army, he attended the Military College of South Carolina (The Citadel) earning a degree in Physics.

Under the pen name Robert Jordan, he wrote an eleven volume fantasy series, incorporating a host of memorable characters, titled The Wheel of Time.

In this reader’s opinion, Robert Jordan was the most interesting and successful entrant into the genre of the numerous authors inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkein.

In a sad coincidence, the great Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni also passed away on Monday, mere hours after Ingmar Bergman, in Rome.

Though best known for the playful photographic detective story Blowup (1966), a perfect fashion-piece mirroring the sensibilities of the then emerging long-hair, drugs, and Rock n’ Roll era, Antonioni’s reputation may rest more firmly on his grim trilogy of alienation and ennui L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962).

Antonioni films were typically less immediately pleasurable than they were intellectually stimulating. The typical Antonioni film featured spare dialogue and minimal and problematic plotting, brilliantly photographed in scenes triumphantly composed with the same assurance and monumentality as the frescos of Giotto or Mantegna.

The Rediff news service aptly observed: Cinema has been orphaned twice — in just 24 hours.

DW-World-DE obituary.

Ernst Ingmar Bergman, undoubtedly the greatest living film director, died earlier today at the age of 89, reportedly “peacefully at home,” presumably at his famous residence on the Island of Faroe in the Baltic.

Bergman directed 44 films in the course of a career lasting 57 years.

London Times

Wikipedia entry

The late G.E.P. How enjoyed great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping, cricket, cars, and mastiffs.

On July 25, Bonham’s at its Knightsbridge branch will be auctioning Arms & Armour from the collections of the late G.E.P. How and others.

The London Times said in its obituary of Mrs. How:

Mrs G. E. P. How, silver expert, was born on January 2, 1915. She died on June 26, 2004, aged 89.

A legend in the art world almost as much for the startling trenchancy of her utterance as for her impeccable scholarship and taste, Mrs. G. E. P. How was perhaps the last surviving link to the heroic age of antique dealing before the war, when great discoveries were made and dealers were becoming more than mere merchants of curios. Mrs. How stood out from the first by her scholarly energy and integrity, and she became one of the most influential dealers of her time. …

Jane Penrice Benson was born in 1915, the posthumous daughter of an officer killed in the war. The family had been based in South Wales, though she herself grew up in the Home Counties. Her early ambition was to be an archaeologist; it was accidentally transmuted into silver when a neighbour suggested that she would enjoy helping to catalogue his collection of early spoons. (The fascination of spoons is that they are the only form of silver to survive in any quantity from the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance; without them it would be impossible to map the early history of the craft.) The expert she was to assist was Commander G. E. P. How, RN (retd), who turned out to be a jovial gentleman dealer with some considerable knowledge and a not entirely unpiratical bent. It was not long before the young Miss Benson was enthralled by man and subject alike.

The Ellis catalogue on which they worked is still a useful reference book, and Miss Benson moved to work with George How, and eventually, after his divorce, to marry him. The Commander and the Commando, as they were soon known, threw themselves into new research, living, breathing and in some cases sleeping with their spoons. …

As dealers, the Hows were a new breed, coming from a background very different from that of the traditional silver merchant, and they owed a lot to their contacts, to their social ease and an unquestionable sense of gentlemanly integrity. Their shops were fitted out to look like a collector’s drawing room, and indeed they held open house in the evenings for collectors to come to talk about silver. The Hows also offered more intellectually than much of the competition. They were among the first to persuade collectors to insist on the highest quality and untouched condition, however modest the piece. The greater importance this placed on the historical value of silver appealed to discerning customers, even of small means, and to museums here and in America. …

(Her) pugnacity could make her seem a fearsome, if diminutive, figure, especially when encountered on the serious ground of silver. But though few were spared the rougher edge of her tongue, no one could be in doubt as to her enormous underlying generosity. No serious scholar was ever refused help, and her personal kindness was great, if discreetly performed.

And she could be compelling company, with a great sense of the pleasures of life. Her offices, particularly the Queen Anne houses in Pickering Place behind Berry’s in St James’s, were glamorous in a peculiarly Dickensian way, with a creaking cage staircase and an Ali Babaesque twinkle of precious metal. To see silver gilt cups gleaming against cherry-red velvet in the sombre drawing room was an irresistible invitation to any sensual collector, and the lucky were further treated to a view of her own collection of spoons and early rarities. Parties at Pickering Place were equally fulfilling, with Mrs. How uncorking bottles of champagne apparently larger than herself. Little else except smoked salmon or caviar would be on offer. Great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping and cricket were all enjoyed to the full.

Cars were a passion “I wear a car,” she said — and well into her eighth decade she sold a beloved silverplated Jaguar SS100 to Alan Clark in order to buy the latest Bentley Turbo, with which she liked to burn off all-comers at the lights. Anyone overtaken by her was liable to a fright, since she was so small as to be almost invisible at the wheel. By way of balance the back of the car was usually occupied by terrifyingly outsize dogs. She helped to save the Old English mastiff from oblivion, and one of her proudest achievements was to have won best of breed at Crufts twice with her dog Don Juan. Characteristically, she refused to show him again, as she did not want to prevent others having a decent crack at the title.

A sample item:

Lot No: 123

A Viking Sword Of Petersen Type M And Wheeler Type I
9th/10th Century
In excavated condition, with broad pattern-welded double-edged blade, tapering flat pattern-welded tang, cruciform hilt comprising short flat ovoidal cross, and shorter pommel en suite surmounted by a flat rectangular button
76.3 cm. blade

Estimate: £10,000 – 15,000
Footnote:
See J. Petersen, De Norske Vikingesverd, Kristiania, 1919; R.E. Mortimer Wheeler, London and The Vikings, London Museum Catalogue: No.1, 1927, pp. 31-32, fig. 13, 1; and J.G. Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age, 2002, pp. 84-86

Tuesday’s Telegraph records the passing of Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Boileau,

a dashing cavalry officer and Arabist whose adventurous post-war career took him to a succession of remote outposts.

(He attended) Cranbrook School, Kent, whence, aged just 17, he enlisted in the Royal Armoured Corps.

His entry to Sandhurst having been delayed by ill health, Peter was commissioned into the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards in August 1945. He joined the regiment in Palestine, served there for 18 months during the Zionist disturbances, and then spent a further year at Cyrenaica, Libya, as regimental transport officer.

On his return to England Boileau discovered that service at home was beyond his means. He volunteered for the East African Independent Armoured Car Squadron, shifting for the next two years between Kenya and Somaliland.

Impressed by his flair for languages, Boileau’s commanding officer recommended him for the official Arabic course. A year’s instruction at Beirut qualified him as a second-class interpreter, and he was posted to HQ British Troops in the Canal Zone. As a GSO 3 (Intelligence), he was responsible for the interrogation of prisoners and for translating captured documents in a period of mounting tension.

There followed three months as Commander of the Libyan Army – he had been promoted to temporary major but was known by the native title of kaid (chief) – until he was relieved by a Turkish officer.

Still as a temporary major, Boileau came into his own with his appointment, in December 1952, as armoured car adviser to the Sheikh of Kuwait, a state newly enriched by oil. Relations with the Arabs deteriorated after Suez, and the Kuwaiti minister of defence delighted in making Boileau’s life difficult. Much to his relief he was transferred, after six years in Kuwait, to HQ Intelligence at Maresfield, Sussex, his services being recognised by his appointment as MBE in 1959.

In 1960 Boileau was appointed equerry to Crown Prince Mohammed of Jordan during an official visit. Bored and truculent, the young man showed little interest in military organisation. He was unaware that Boileau understood the dialect in which he conversed with his entourage, usually to plan some more agreeable distraction. Bewildered that he was constantly forestalled, the prince cut short his visit after only three weeks.

Later in the year Boileau was posted to Aden in an unglamorous intelligence role, and from July 1962 was military liaison officer to the Arab minister of defence in the Federation of South Arabia. In 1964 he was seconded as a political officer in the Radfan area. Back in Aden in 1965, he was upgraded to deputy permanent secretary in the ministry, in the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Boileau was a marked man with the terrorists, who made a last attempt to assassinate him before he left. A grenade was thrown on to his terrace while he was sitting there with his wife and some friends. Boileau miraculously escaped injury, though his wife was peppered with fragments and all their companions were more or less seriously wounded.

Boileau decided to retire, and joined a firm of overseas consultants, based in Beirut, with responsibility for its office in Rome. In 1971 he moved to Rhodesia, and later to Cyprus and Andorra, before settling at Mirande in the Gers, where he shed the anglicised pronunciation of his name (“Boylow”) in favour of the French one.

Tall, fine-featured and bookish, Boileau loved music, poetry and armoured cars in equal measure. His tolerant, philosophical view of life made him the most relaxing of companions and inspired a devoted following, which included cats and dogs, and children for whom he made up stories.

Always a nonconformist, he had no intention of retiring to Dorset like his father. He once astonished friends and fellow diners at a Chelsea restaurant by bursting into song in Italian. His marriage, in 1950, to Jean, daughter of Walter Fitzgerald Hill, whom he had met in Mogadishu, was in defiance of his commanding officer. He described her as the wittiest and kindest of women and they were a devoted couple until her death in 1999. There were no children.

Boileau’s daily routine at Mirande included collecting his reserved copy of The Daily Telegraph from beneath the town’s ancient arcades, and strolling across the square to greet French Muslim veterans, or harkis, in Arabic. In his final maison de retraite, he was curtly ordered by a newly-arrived nurse, of North African appearance, to undress and put on his pyjamas. He reproved her gently in Arabic: “Would you speak to your father like that?” The girl swiftly joined the ranks of his admirers, observing that he “spoke the Arabic of kings”.

Peter Boileau was an active member of the Anciens combatants at Mirande who provided a guard of honour at his funeral.

Norman Podhoretz is unkind enough to give Arthur Schlesinger the obituary he deserves.

There are three things to say about the work of Arthur Schlesinger, who has just died at the age of eighty-nine: (1) He was an exceptionally good writer, commanding a lucid, vivid, and often elegant prose style. (2) He was an exceptionally bad historian: incapable of doing justice to any idea with which he disagreed, and so tendentious that he invariably denigrated and/or vilified anyone who had ever espoused any such idea. Like the so-called “Whig interpretation of history” in England, Schlesinger’s voluminous work as a historian amounts to the proposition that the story of freedom in America is the story of the Democratic party, and specifically of its never-ending struggle against the sinister bastions of privilege, oppression, and ignorance represented by the Republicans of the modern era and their forebears. (3) This unshakable conviction not only made his wonderfully readable accounts of the past unreliable and in many cases even worthless; it also warped his political judgment in the present, leading him in the last forty years of his life to support the forces that were pushing the Democratic party to the Left. In becoming an apologist for these forces, he betrayed the liberalism that he himself, in The Vital Center, had earlier espoused and whose banishment from the Democratic party has been, and will continue to be, a calamity for this country.

A dead accurate summation, I’d say.

Ralph de Toledano, circa 1950

Ralph de Toledano, one of the most prominent figures of the Conservative Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, died in Washington on Saturday at 90 years of age. He wrote a major newspaper column, appeared on radio and television, was one of the founders of National Review, served for twenty years on the editorial board of Newsweek, and published 25 books.

Toledano was born in Tangier, Morocco to American parents of Shephardic Jewish descent. He attended Julliard, and graduated from Columbia University in 1938.

In the 1930s, he joined the Socialist Party of America, and was made youth leader of its anti-Communist “old guard” faction. He became editor of the old guard magazine New Leader in 1934. Under Toledano’s editorship, it became one of the most forceful and effective anti-Communist journals of that era.

He served in the US Army, and in the OSS during WWII.

Toledano was one of the most prominent of a very small number conservative voices in 1950s and 1960s America. He was an extremely prolific journalist and his nationally syndicated column was highly influential in the rise of the Conservative Movement. He deserves to be remembered with affection and respect for his passionate anti-Communism and devoted service to the cause of Liberty.

New York Times

Washington Times

Wikipedia

Ryszard KapuÃ…u203aciÃ…u201eski, Poland’s most distinguished journalist, died yesterday in Warsaw at the age of 74 of a heart attack.

According to Alfred A. Knopf, his American publisher, he wrote 19 books which were translated into more than 20 languages, was witness to 27 coups and revolutions, and was condemned to death four times. He was considered a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Michael Werbowski:

Kapuscinski, who came from behind the iron curtain, was a remarkable reporter in the sense that he documented the last days of rotten regimes. He was a prescient observer of things to come. At times he was there for the final fall. As well, he was one of the first reporters and correspondents to venture into conflict zones and parts of the world that were off limits to many of his mainstream colleagues both in the East and West. He covered, analyzed and described happenings few of us would know about in detail today if he had not been there to relate those events.

Born on March 4, 1932, Kapuscinski became, without doubt, one of Poland’s most famed reporters. His international reputation is now legendary. He was one of the only full-time “roving reporters” for the Polish Press Agency; hence, its “world correspondent,” so to say.

In the 1960s, he traveled the world, mostly to the developing regions. He covered wars, conflicts, uprisings and revolutions. He documented the African independent movements, and much later the process of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire (see his personal travelogue titled Imperium). He approached his assignments through meticulous reading and researching books on his subjects or the “target country.” His written works are a unique literary genre, blending “literary journalism” with visual and frequent historical references that “frame” the events within a specific period…

Kapuscinski in his dispatches, essays and articles decried and described the absurdity of absolute power in a tragicomic manner through the use of vivid, colorful language and narrative style.

Whether reporting from Russia or Africa or Latin America, Kapuscinski in his own words said he wrote for “people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world.” His vivacity, brilliance and inquisitiveness about the world is a memorable legacy for all reporters — citizen or otherwise — to cherish.

Wikipedia entry.

Born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, he was renamed for his stepfather, following his mother’s divorce and remarriage. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1935, having played center on undefeated football teams in 1932 and 1933. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1941, and served in the Navy in WWII.

Appointed to the Vice-Presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment by Richard Nixon, following Spiro Agnew’s resignation, Ford is the only US President to have served in office without having been elected either President or Vice President. Having died at 93, he holds the record as longest-lived US President, having surpassed Ronald Reagan’s previous record by 6 weeks.

Gerald Ford served in office during a painful period in American history. His administration saw the US withdrawal from Vietnam. His greatest service to the United States was undoubtedly his pardon of Richard Nixon, which mercifully closed the Watergate affair, and spared the country the painful and extended spectacle of the trial of a former president.

The Watergate scandal made the 1976 election most likely unwinnable by a Republican. But Ford’s defeat by Jimmy Carter simply produced the most incompetent and disastrous administration in American history, making inevitable the election of Ronald Reagan.

General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, liberator of the Republic of Chile, died today of a heart attack in Santiago at the age of 91, eluding finally the vindictive efforts at persecution of the cowardly hound pack of the international left.

Most sensible people would regard the personal project of the British big game hunter hero of Geoffrey Household’s famous 1939 thriller Rogue Male, the stalking and assassination of Adolph Hitler, as a commendable effort to save the lives and liberty of millions from the depraved ambitions of a tyrant.

What Captain Thorndike (played by Walter Pidgeon in the 1941 film version by Fritz Lang, retitled as Man Hunt) tried to do fictionally for the European world of 1939, Augusto Pinochet really did in cold reality for the population of Chile in 1973.

The Communist Salvador Allende managed to gain power in 1970 by a plurality of 36.2 percent in a three-way election.

Immediately upon taking office, Allende began instituting La vía chilena al socialismo (“the Chilean Path to Socialism”), featuring the nationalization of all large industry, government takeover of the health care system and education, land seizure and redistribution of all property of more than eighty hectares (197 acres) of irrigated land. The Allende government defaulted on all foreign debt, and instituted a freeze on prices along with a government-dictated raise of all salaries.

Naturally, even basic commodities disappeared from supermarket shelves, and the necessities of life became only available via the black market. In 1971, Allende established diplomatic relations with Communist Cuba, and invited Fidel Castro for a month-long visit in which Castro participated actively in the government of Chile.

Hyperinflation (508%) and food shortages ensued. Allende proceeded to rule while disregarding the courts. Attempts at restriction of freedom of speech, and unauthorized seizures of farms and private busineses became commonplace.

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, led by General Pinochet, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army, intervened to restore the rule of law. Defeated, and facing arrest and trial, Allende committed suicide with the same AK-47 Kalashnikov given to him as a gift by Fidel Castro.

General Pinochet ruled extra-constitutionally for 17 years, in the course of which a few thousand radical leftist extremists, bent upon violence and upon assaults upon the basic liberties and property rights of the people of the Republic of Chile, and guilty of revolutionary conspiracy and assassination attempts, were prophylactically eliminated by the security forces of the Republic.

Suppose Captain Thorndike had been able to shoot Hitler before the outbreak of WWII? Suppose he, and perhaps some big game hunter associates, had also eliminated Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann and another few thousand key Nazi lieutenants, in time to prevent the full establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany, saving thereby millions of innocent lives? Should Thorndike have subsequently been prosecuted by one European Union Jack-in-Office judiciar after another?

In 1980, General Pinochet promulgated a new constitution promising a return to civilian rule in 1990. In 1988, he sought the approval of a plebiscite for another 8 year term as president. Failing to win that vote, he proceeded to conduct a democratic election, and stepped down voluntarily on March 11, 1990 to an elected successor. He left power, having restored both freedom and prosperity to Chile.

Mr. Allende’s role model, Fidel Castro, seized power in 1959 and continues to rule tyrannically over a starving and impoverished population nearly 50 years later. Castro has executed many thousands of people, but curiously enough, not one single European Union judicial official has ever chosen to indict or prosecute him.

The general’s reputation, and personal freedom, were the objects during the later years of his life to an endless succession of manipulative and propagandistic attempts at judicial vengeance by the international left. With his death, he has moved beyond their reach to take his rightful place, along with Bolivar and O’Higgins, among the heroes and liberators of Latin American.

Viva Pinochet!

Renowned holster manufacturer (Seventrees Ltd.), and supplier of specialized covert arms (Armament Systems Procedures Corporation) for government agencies, Paris Theodore died on November 16 last of multiple sclerosis at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York.

In 1966, he founded Seventrees Ltd. a much-admired company producing holsters designed for convenience and concealment. His holster company led to the design and production of other products, including firearms, intended for the use of covert operatives in extreme situations.

Theodore’s best-known design was the ASP 9mm Parabellum pistol which introduced the “Guttersnipe” sight (beveled channel running down the top of the gun) clear grips (revealing magazine contents) and the forefinger grip (since widely adopted in many semi-automatic pistol designs). The ASP’s motto was “Unseen in the best places!”

He will be missed.

Marketwire

Wall Street Journal

NY Sun

The “Quest For Excellence” ASP Special Edition

ASP 2000 9mm Pistol A Tribute to Paris Theodore