PRAISE

      Praise for George MacDonald Fraser

      ‘It’s all there, right down to a Dead Man’s Chest, cleavages that are everything they should be and characters in sea-boots who say nothing but “Arr!” and “Me Hearty!” in a plot that is wonderfully absurd’ Financial Times

      ‘It’s great fun and rings true: a Highland Fling of a book’

      Eric Linklater, author of The Wind on the Moon

      ‘Twenty-five years have not dimmed Mr Fraser’s recollections of those hectic days of soldiering. One takes leave of his characters with real and grateful regret’

      Sir Bernard Fergusson, Sunday Times

      ‘A self-confident performance by an old hand. Mr Fraser clearly enjoys being master of such a wide and wild plot, and makes sure to leave room in it for his most famous creation, the eponymous hero of his Flashman adventure series’

       New Yorker

      ‘Fabulous … you’ll want to stay up all night reading this one’

       Washington Post

      ‘MacDonald Fraser falls into what these days is an exclusive group: the storyteller who can write’

      D J Taylor, Sunday Times

      ‘Mr Fraser is a great historical novelist and in Black Ajax he is at the very top of his form. Damme if he ain’t’

      Christopher Matthew, Daily Mail

      ‘This is not a flashy novel, wearing its learning noisily. It’s rigorous, intelligent, meticulously horrifying. Wonderfully well done’

      Nicci Gerrard, Observer

      ‘The sense of front-line danger is palpable and the smell of action is remarkable. His descriptions of the sudden violent actions are breathtaking. This is battle as it is done’

      Melvyn Bragg, Evening Standard

      ‘This is a book as good as anything Fraser has written … A moving and penetrating contribution to the literature of the Burma campaign’

      Max Hastings, Daily Telegraph

      ‘It’s George MacDonald Fraser in top form on the Borders, juggling lairds and outlaws in bitter battling over disputed territory.’

      Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year

      ‘The sense of front-line danger is palpable and the smell of action is remarkable. His descriptions of the sudden violent actions are breathtaking. This is battle as it is done’

      Melvyn Bragg, Evening Standard

      ‘Twenty-five years have not dimmed Mr Fraser’s recollections of those hectic days of soldiering. One takes leave of his characters with real and grateful regret’

      Sir Bernard Fergusson, Sunday Times