Rolling up the Peiho

Fifteen thousand horse, foot and guns rolling up the Peiho, not to fight or hold or to conquer, but just so that the Big Barbarian could stand before the Son of Heaven and watch him put his mark on paper. “And when he does,” says Elgin, “the ends of the earth will have met at last, and there will be no more savage kings for our people to subdue. We’ve come a long way from our northern forests; I wonder if we were wise.”


Flashman and the Dragon, p.168, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Harry Flashman's schooldays

I snivelled and bought my way to safety when I was a small boy, [at school] and bullied and tyrannized when I was a big one; how the d---l I’m not in the House of Lords by now, I can’t think.

Flashman's Lady, p.12, Pan edition, 1979.