Dam’ few crowned heads

      And their Christianity don't run to morality, not far at least. They lie and deceive with a will, drink to excess, slaughter each other for amusement, and the women couple like stoats. The corollary to their adage that ‘a virtuous woman is a crown to husband’ is that there are dam’ few crowned heads in Abyssinia, and hear, hear! say I, for ’twould be a cruel shame to have all that splendid married pulchritude going to waste.



Flashman on the March, p.22, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


(With thanks to Dundrillon for suggesting this quote.)


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, morality.

Like pistol cracks

      They gave her dinner, and she entranced and appalled the company by laying into the goods like a starving python; as Stanley reported: “She ate like a gourmande, disposing of what came before her without regard to the horrified looks . . . pudding before beef, blancmange with potatoes . . . emitting labial smacks like pistol cracks.”


Flashman on the March, p.283, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, starving.

No butcher’s bill

      For once — and for the only time in my experience of sixty years’ soldiering in heaven knows how many campaigns — there was no butcher’s bill. We hadn’t lost a man storming Magdala, just seventeen wounded, and with only two dead at Arogee and one careless chap who shot himself on the march up, I doubt if we had more than half a dozen fatalities in the whole campaign, mortally sick included. If there were nothing else to testify to Napier’s genius, that casualty return alone would do, for I never heard the like of it in war.



Flashman on the March, p.280, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, casualty.

Incredible delusion

There followed a brief silence during which I kept a straight face. Suddenly it became plain that they were under the incredible delusion that I shot Theodore, but they didn’t care to say so in as many words, which was vastly diverting. Of course it was what they’d wanted, and had hinted to me through Prideaux, and Speedy, having seen the pistol in my hand and Theodore stark and stiff, had concluded that I’d done the dirty deed to save H.M.G. the painful embarrassment of having to try and possibly hang the black bugger. (“But no one must ever know, Sir Robert . . . controversy . . . press gang, scoundrel Stanley . . . questions in the house . . . uproar . . . regicide . . . scandalum magnatum . . . honour of the Army . . . “)


Flashman on the March, p.273, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Fretful followers

He was back at dawn with his fretful followers, several hundred of ’em; they tried to break out of Magdala by the back door, which would have meant a terrifying descent of the Sangalat cliffs in pitch darkness, if they’d been mad enough to attempt it. They’d been discouraged by the presence of Gallas who were waiting for them at the foot of the precipice chanting, “Come down, beloved, oh come down!” I must say I liked the Gallas’ style.


Flashman on the March, p.260, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Alice's tea party

. . . I, on the subject of bizarre conversation, had never thought to meet a crazier discourser than Hung-Hsiu-Chuan, leader of the Taiping Rebellion who was hopelessly mad, or Mangas Colorado, chief of the Mimbreno Apache, who was hopelessly drunk. I discovered in that hut under Selassie that I’d been quite wrong; King Theodore was both hopelessly mad and drunk, and could give either of them a head start and a beating in the race to Alice’s tea party.


Flashman on the March, pp.202-03, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, conversation.

Fall out, Flashy

The army of Abyssinia was at rest, thousands of men loafing and talking and brewing their billies like anu other soldiers, save that these were black, and instead of shirt-sleeves and dangling galluses there were white shamas and tight leggings, and as well as the piled firearms there were stands of spears and racks of sickle bladed swords. They looked well, as the Gallas had done, and perhaps as soon as tomorrow they would go out to face the finest army in the world under one of the great captains. And how many come well to bed-time? And how many King’s Own and Dukes and Baluch, for that matter? Fall out, Flashy, thinks I, this ain’t your party; lie low, keep quiet, and above all, stay alive.


Flashman on the March, pp.198-99, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, soldiers.

Wink, wink

. . . in Ab society, which as I’ve told you is probably the most immoral on earth (Cheltenham ain’t in it), rogering the hostess is almost obligatory,  part of the etiquette, like leaving cards, and not at all out of the way in a country where it’s considered a mortal insult to praise a woman’s chastity, since it implies that she’s not attractive enough to be galloped. Say no more.


Flashman on the March, p.169, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, etiquette.

Earthly paradise

      I’m no old Africa hand, and what I’d seen of Abyssinia so far had jaundiced rather than impressed, but I’m bound to say that the Lake Tana country is as close to earthly paradise as I’d ever struck, for scenery at least. From Azez to Gorgora on the northern shore is nothing out of the ordinary, but the lake itself beats anything in Switzerland or Italy, a great blue shimmering inland sea fringed by tropical forest, hills, and meadows, for all the world like a glorious garden of exotic flowers and shrubs in groves of splendid trees and ferns.


Flashman on the March, p.128, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, paradise.

Aldershot on a pension

“Theodore’ll have to die, somehow; can’t execute him, but can’t have him hanging around Aldershot on a pension, either. Public wouldn’t stand for it. He’ll just have to be done in on the quiet, accidental-looking.”
      “What hypocrites you are!”
      “No such thing. It’s just the civilised way of doing it, that’s all.”


Flashman on the March, pp.211-12, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Another ruined village

We had reined in on the outskirts of yet another ruined village, beside a little walled enclosure filled with a great pile of bones, many of them plainly belonging to infants. I ain’t over-queasy, as you know, but the thought of how they’d come to be there turned my stomach. Uliba viewed them dispassionately.
       “Thus Theodore wins the love of his people.”


Flashman on the March, p.105, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Snatched up at random

I was as shocked by their accuracy as by their callousness, but Uliba merely remarked that a Galla warrior could hit any target up to fifty yards with a spear or a knife or even a stone snatched up at random.


Flashman on the March, pp.103-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, accuracy.

Belgravian sisters

It was being borne in on me that the moral climate of Abysinnia was not quite that of our own polite society — not that Uliba’s Belgravian sisters are averse to a cut off the joint from time to time, but they know enough to keep quiet about it.


Flashman on the March, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Not exactly Eric Newby

      If you suppose, by the way, that I am unduly susceptible, you should read the recollections of J.A. St John, Esq., who travelled in Abyssinia in the 1840s and appears to have spent most of his time goggling at boobies, on which he was obviously an authority.


Flashman on the March, p.78, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, boobies.

Delicious little balls

There was a curried pastry which Uliba-Wark divided among the four of us, and some delicious little balls like the bittebolle they serve n Holland, only these weren’t meat but, as I discovered on inquiry, powdered locusts bound with fat. It was too late by then, so I calmed my stomach with some of the liquor they call tej, which is a fermentation of honey and barley, guaranteed to put you under the table if you ain’t careful, but capital in moderation.


Flashman on the March, p.68, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, moderation.

Certain defeat

. . . for perhaps the first time in her long and turbulent history Britain was going into a war which everyone believed we were going to lose. Everyone, that is, except Bughunter Bob Napier.


Flashman on the March, p.27, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Handsome, cruel, and bloodthirsty

      To begin with, you must understand that the Abyssinians are like no other Africans, being some kind of Semitic folk who came from Arabia in the far-off time, handsome, cruel, and bloodthirsty, but civilised beyond any in the continent bar the Egyptians . . .


Flashman on the March, p.22, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Little by little

A land of mystery and terror and cruelty, and the loveliest women in all Africa . . . a smiling golden nymph in her little leather tunic, teasing me as she sat by a woodland stream plaiting her braids . . . a gaudy barbarian queen lounging on cushions surrounded by her tame lions . . . a tawny young beauty remarking to my captors: “If we feed him into the fire, little by little, he will speak . . .”
       Aye, it’s and interesting country, Abyssinia.


Flashman on the March, p.14, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Abyssinia.

Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier to you

      “Napier? Not Bob the Bughunter? What the blazes is he doing in Abyssinia?”


Flashman on the March, p.2, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Abyssinia.