Complete McAuslan

George MacDonald Fraser’s hilarious stories of the most disastrous soldier in the British Army – collected together for the first time in one volume.

Private McAuslan, J., the Dirtiest Soldier in the Word (alias the Tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division’s answer to the Pekin Man) first demonstrated his unfitness for service in The General Danced at Dawn. He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling or destroying his equipment, through the pages of McAuslan in the Rough. The final volume, The Sheikh and the Dustbin, pursues the career of the great incompetent as he shambles across North African and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces.

His admirers know him as court-martial defendant, ghost-catcher, star-crossed lover and golf caddie extraordinary. Whether map-reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night or confronting Arab rioters, McAuslan’s talent for catastrophe is guaranteed. Now, for the first time, the inimitable McAuslan stories are collected together in one glorious volume.

Best known as the author of the famous Flashman Papers, George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008) served in both the Border Regiment in Burma during the war and in the Gordon Highlanders. After the war he worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada, and became deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. In addition to his novels and works of non-fiction, he wrote numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers, Royal Flash and the James Bond film, Octopussy, and worked on scripts including Force 10 from Navarone and Superman II.