His plump little claw

      He was reckoned to be the smartest newsman of the time, better than Billy Russell even… Blowitz was a human ferret with his plump little claw on every pulse from Lisbon to the Kremlin…


Flashman and the Tiger, p.14, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, journalist.

Spoils of war

It was a great bloody carnival, with everyone making the most of the war: I recall one incident, in a Lucknow courtyard (I believe it may have been the Begum’s palace) in which I saw Highlanders, their gory bayonets laid aside, smashing open chests that were simply stuffed with jewels, and grinning idiot little Goorkhas breaking mirrors for sheer sport and wiping their knives on silks and fabrics worth a fortune – they didn’t know any better. There were Sikh infantry dancing with gold chains and necklaces round their necks, an infantry subaltern staggering under a great enameled pot overflowing with coins, a naval gunner bleeding to death with a huge shimmering bolt of cloth-of-gold clasped in his arms – there were dead and dying men everywhere, our own fellows as well as pandies, and desperate hand-to-hand fighting going on just over the courtyard wall; muskets banging, men shrieking, two Irishmen coming to blows over a white marble statuette smeared with blood, and Billy Russell stamping and damning his luck because he had no rupees on him to buy the treasure which private soldiers were willing to trade away for the price of a bottle of rum.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.264, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, loot.

Gentlemen of the press

I knew it was as good as over when Billy Russell of The Times showed up to join Campbell’s final march on Lucknow – it’s a sure sign of victory when the correspondents gather like vultures.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.263, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes.

Good advice from Billy Russell

I’ve written about it at length elsewhere – the fearful havoc of embarking, with ships full of spewing soldiers rocking at anchor for days on end, the weeping women who were ordered to stay behind (although my little pal, Fan Duberly, sneaked aboard disguised as a washerwoman), the horses fighting and smashing in their cramped stalls, the hideous stink, the cholera corpses floating in the bay, Billy Russell standing on the quay with his note-book damning Lord Lucan’s eyes – ‘I have my duty, too my lord, which is to inform my readers, and if you don’t like what you’re doing being reported, why then, don’t do it! And that’s my advice to you!’ Of course he was daft and Irish, was Billy, but so was Lucan, and they stood and cussed each other like Mississippi pilots.

Flashman at the Charge, p.59, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Billy Russell, Crimean War.