As I said

As I said to Speedicut, it’s hell in the diplomatic.



Flashman on the March, p.175, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, hell.

A cool half million

           If you’ve read my previous memoirs you’ll know me better than Speedicut did, and won’t share his misgivings about trusting me with a cool half million in silver. Old Flash may be a model of the best vices — lechery, treachery, poltroonery, deceit and dereliction of duty, all present and correct, as you know, and they’re not the half of it — but larceny ain’t his style at all.


Flashman on the March, p.15, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, larceny.

Genteel sponging

. . . I learned that he was in the diplomatic, which didn’t surprise me, for he was a born toad-eater with a great gift of genteel sponging and an aversion to work.


Flashman on the March, p.10, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, diplomatic.

And there was great rejoicing

. . . we knew each other on the instant, and there was great rejoicing, in a wary sort of way, for we’d never been your usual bosom pals, both being leery by nature.


Flashman on the March, p.10, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, leery.

Conversation from a Victorian marriage

      ‘Harry – you are sure you have not been astride Mrs Lade?’
      I was so amazed she had to say it twice.
      ‘Eh? Good God, girl, what do you mean?’
      ‘Have you mounted her?’
      I can’t think how I’ve kept my sanity, talking to that woman for sixty years. Of course, at the time we’d only been married for five, and I hadn’t plumbed the depths of her eccentricity. I could only gargle and exclaim:
      ‘Damnit, I’ve told you I haven’t! And where on earth – it is shocking to use expressions of that kind!’
      ‘Why? You use them – I heard you, at Lady Chalmers’, when you were talking to Jack Speedicut, and you were both remarking on Lottie Canvendish, and whatever her husband could see in such a foolish creature, and you said you expected he found her a good mount. I dare say I was not meant to hear.
      ‘I should think not! and I can have said no such thing – and anyway, ladies ain’t meant to understand such . . . such vulgar words.'
      ‘The ladies who get mounted must understand them.’
      ‘They ain’t ladies!’
      ‘Why not? Lottie Canvendish is. So am I, and you have mounted me – lots of times.’ She sighed, and nestled close, God help us.

Flashman's Lady, pp.195-6, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, Jewish.

And that lot

‘…Flashman’s brutality had disgusted most even of his own intimate friends …’ No, by God, there was one downright, shameful lie – the kind of friends I had at Rugby you couldn’t have disgusted, not Speedicut and Rattle and that lot…

Flashman in the Great Game, p.335, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.