Fact of the Day - posted by Tony with Rabhairt's permission being in absentia.

Scottish author George MacDonald Fraser died on January 2nd.  He served in the Border Regiment in World War II and was a commissioned officer in the Gordon Highlanders after the war.  After resigning from the army, he worked for a time as a journalist in the Glasgow Herald before becoming a novelist and screen writer.  He is best known for his series of twelve 'Flashman' books, purporting to be the memoirs of the elderly Flashman, who in his youth was the notorious bully of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays'.  Fraser has in common with Nigel Tranter a reputation for historical accuracy of the events in which his fictional 'hero' finds himself, and the books are very entertaining.