It might be an exaggeration to say that the Great Game brings out Flashman’s kinder, gentler side but he does actually fall in love with the Rani of Jhansi, a heroine of Indian independence, a villain of the Victorian view of the Indian Mutiny. What’s more, Flashman is reasonably even-handed in his treatment of the Mutiny itself, noting and sympathising with some of the reasons for the Mutiny as well as highlighting the savagery that it unleashed as well as the brutality of the British response. As such, it’s one of the best, and certainly the most entertaining, accounts of the Mutiny (or the First War for Indian Indendence) out there.