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As a devotee of the Flashman series, I turned to this when I ran out of Flashman books. This is a mixture of memoir of Fraser's work in Hollywood as a screenwriter, in which he worked on films which were not terribly distinguished -- with the partial exception of the Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers, which were quite good -- and chapters in which he delivers grumpily conservative political opinions. As it happens, I share those opinions. But while well expressed, Fraser adds little to the discussion by voicing, or venting, those opinions in book form. In short, this is for the Fraser devotee only.

The book is in three interwoven threads, Fraser's screenwriting experiences, 'interlude's, and 'angry old man', a series of essays about what's wrong with the world. Much has been made of one of the latter, a short rant by an old soldier opposed to Britain's involvement in the 'Fourth Afghan War,' but these essays cover a range of topics, and there is plenty of scorn to go around. The book should be uniformly interesting for fans of Fraser, but not strongly recommended for others. For me, the revelation that he is not done with Flashman was worth the price of admission.

GMF was a scholar of all things historical and lived through enough to have well reasoned opinions. His thoughts on England at time of this books publishing sound like it could have been written about America right now. This book articulates much of what many of us feel, there are a great many interesting anecdotes from behind the scenes of films GMF worked on as well. Should be a must read for students who will never get a proper civics class in today's classrooms.

Some interesting stories of what goes on behind the scenes between script writers and producers, directors and actors. The movie stories are separated by George MacDonald Fraser's very politically incorrect opinions on the world changing around him and you can feel the glee he enjoyed while writing them. It is not hard to understand where Flashman formed his opinions.

A fine round off to a stellar career as a cogent observer of the human condition. Old school values, an unbiased commentator, and one who has "seen the elephant", he will be sadly missed in this age of braying intellectual lightweights. The passing of a lovely mind.

not flashman very difficult, very compelling. you can agree or disagree with him.he does raise viable issues.this book is worth the read.

Not his best work, a bit cranky.

A great read with thought provoking insights.

A mixture of reminiscences of GMF's working as a script writer in the movie industry, with more recent (yet somehow timeless) political diatribes against New Labour, their sucking up to the EU, the insincere apology industry, hypocritical political correctness, dumbing down of journalism, going soft on crime, the folly (and immorality) of sending women to war, and so forth.Unfortunately for me, nearly all movies and their actors were entirely unfamiliar - 'before my time'. In contrast, I did enjoy GMF's 'what has become of the world' articles enormously - they have lost none of their relevance in the almost 20 years since this book was published. It is a sad comment on our times that his perfectly sensible and realistic opinions, once entirely commonplace, nowadays feel rather unusual and refreshing (or rather, eccentric and shocking, from the perspective of the feeble-minded).

This book brings a breath of fresh air from the Woke mob,the PC crowd ,remainers and people who find racists in every direction. It also has opinions on every subject under the sun .I wonder what GMF would think of todays snowflake generation .Probably not a lot.

Great to hear some of the musings from the writer of the Flashman books, the McAuslan stories and the screenplay fixer of many great movies.Some of his opinions may offend some of the more feeble minded readers, but these opinions are those of a man whe had been there, seen it and done it.Recommended reading

The rantings were boring but, in an e-book, at least easy to skip. The film reminiscences were more interesting in parts, and fine for a book that was basically just for tying up loose ends. If this had been the first book by him I had ever read, however, there would not have been a second.Luckily Flashman and then McAuslan sucked me in long ago and the autobiographies too were great fun. Reading the other one-off books was generally easy and enjoyable too. His best series repay re-reading too, and I have several times, and I guess any author should be proud of that.

This is a blend of reminiscence and rant. As a fan of the Flashman series, and grateful for the gentle introduction to history, I am used to the "non-PC" tone. These and his others, like Black Ajax, are written using language appropriate to the times. Needless to say, the contemporary ear catches and initially hesitates at both vocab and subject. But not for long. Along with the history comes the idiolect and it forms part of the picture.And the explanation is given in this book, a collection of stories cataloguing GMF's work as a script writer for big films, a little general autobiography and some essays on what has been on his mind; and this is in general the delivery of both barrels at politicians and political correctness.I found the film bits interesting. It's not my bag but I've seen the films in question and it is quite interesting. The autobiography I found fascinating; this man has had a very interesting life, has been there and done it - and 'been there' includes living - and fighting - through the war. The bits I found brave, interesting, thought-provoking and very rarely questionable, are the essays where he puts the world to rights. And this is logical, thoughtful and absolutely off the scale PC-wise. It's not what you hear today - and that's rather his point. There is more than you would expect which makes absolute sense - but would have the current "terminally offended" frothing at the mouth.Worth a read, but in small chunks.