George MacDonald Fraser, the creator of the Flashman series, has died aged 82.

Fraser died following a battle with cancer, said Nicholas Latimer, the director of publicity for the American publishers Knopf. Mr Latimer was unable to provide details of where Fraser died. He lived on the Isle of Man.

The author, born in Carlisle in 1925, served with the Army in India and Burma during the Second World War and in the Middle East after the war. He worked as a journalist in the UK and Canada for more than 20 years before turning to fiction.

Flashman was first published in 1969 and detailed the adult life of Harry Flashman, the bullying schoolboy of the 19th-century classic Tom Brown’s Schooldays. In the books, which included Flashman on the March, the anti-hero was a roguish soldier in the British Army.

In the book and 11 sequels, the roguish Flashman fought, drank and womanised his way across the British Empire, Europe and America, playing a pivotal role in the century’s great historical moments. A vain, cowardly rogue, Flashman nonetheless emerged from each episode covered in glory, rising to the rank of medal-garlanded brigadier-general.

Each instalment purports to come from a faux-biographical trove of memoirs - The Flashman Papers - discovered in England in the 1960s.

The Flashman books were hugely best-selling romps but also praised by critics for their storytelling flair and attention to historical detail.

Some readers and critics found Flashman’s 19th-century racism and sexism off-putting. But by the time the final Flashman book, Flashman on the March, appeared in 2005, the critical tide had turned in Fraser’s favour.

Fraser also wrote screenplays, including The Three Musketeers (1973) and the James Bond film Octopussy (1983).

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy