I was going through a friend’s book collection when I came across the Flashman series — all the novels were lined up in order. I read the first one, Flashman, and found it fascinating. George MacDonald Fraser has taken the bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays and imagined a life for him. By the end I was intrigued by Flashman. I often find that I like the slightly nastier, darker characters in novels.

The books are written through Flashman’s eyes. In the first one he is an older man looking back on the events of his life, so the stories have the feel of a diary. Indeed, when Fraser published the first novel some people believed it was an authentic memoir.

The first book picks up with him getting expelled from Rugby and coming home to face his father. He ends up in the army thanks to lies and deception: he rigs a duel; he sleeps with someone’s girlfriend. Because of his lies, people get the idea that he is a brave, courageous soldier when he is really a liar, bully and coward.

He is a Zelig figure. Each book starts with him leaving home having got into a bit of trouble, yet he always winds up in an illustrious scene from the mid- to late 19th century: the Afghan retreat in 1849; the Great Indian Mutiny; a brush with the slave trade and meeting Abraham Lincoln; the charge of the Light Brigade. He meets Victoria and Albert and bumps into Bismarck while hunting at Balmoral. He’s always in the thick of the action but escapes death and injury by ducking or hiding behind others. Some people suspect he is a charlatan but they end up dying.

Fraser recreates these scenes meticulously and you come away with a quite impressive historical knowledge. I read Royal Flash, the second in the series, as the Americans waged war in Afghanistan. A lot of the talk was about warlords and the different tribes — just as in the novel.

Flashman is like the James Bond of the original Ian Fleming novels — not the suave smoothie of the films but colder. He is a womaniser, calculating, not serving Queen and country but himself. He is not someone you like but you are intrigued by the way he gets away with it. It’s quite refreshing to read a book in which the main character has no redeeming features.

Richard Bacon presents 19 Keys, Mon-Fri, Channel 5, from Nov 10, 7.30pm