born 1925
British novelist.
He trained as a journalist and served as deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald (196869). The success of his first novel, Flashman (1969), led him to become a full-time writer. In it and subsequent novels filled with historical colour and detail, the bully of Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays is his hero. Recent novels include Black Ajax (1998) and Flashman and the Tiger (2000). He has also written screenplays.