Back on 1 April, The Times ran a story which announced that the Speedicut Archive, belonging to a friend of Flashman, had been found alongside a human skeleton during the redevelopment of a former army barracks site in Leicester
Back on 1 April, The Times ran a story which announced that the Speedicut Archive, belonging to a friend of Flashman, had been found alongside a human skeleton during the redevelopment of a former army barracks site in Leicester.
According to the story, the papers provide ‘an extraordinary insight into the life of a real soldier who somehow, against all plausibility, fought in all the major expeditions of the period’.
The story heralds the publication of the first of The Speedicut Papers, which relate the adventures of Victorian soldier, courtier, sexual libertine and reluctant hero Jasper Speedicut. The series builds on the Flashman series written by George MacDonald Fraser, which in turn are based on characters first encountered in Tom Brown’s schooldays. Christopher Joll is the, well, ‘editor’ of the papers.
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Guests inlcuded: actor Anthony Andrews; broadcaster Michael Portillo; Field Marshal the Lord Guthrie; Major General Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter; author Charles Sebag-Montefiore; historian Dan Snow; Minister of State for the Armed Forces, the Rt Hon. Andrew Robathan; Team Manager of the Gold Medal-winning Dressage Team, Major Dicky Waygood; former Tory minister Douglas Hogg, Viscount Hailsham; art historian and broadcaster Philip Mould OBE – and, on guard, the officers and men of the Light Cavalry HAC.
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