Perversely partial

. . . but she was a hearty piece of middle-aged Eve’s flesh of no remarkable allure — that she appealed to me was by the way; I’m a connoisseur of feminine beauty but no discrimination worth a dam, and anyway I’m perversely partial to royal rattle.


Flashman on the March, p.168, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Worn uncommon well

      By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn't care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen — she'd performed like a demented houri then and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century?

Flashman and the Tiger, p.224, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A frenzy of entreaty

      Well, you know what follows when a beautiful young women, threatened by brutal enemies, turns to me in a frenzy of entreaty, hand outstretched and eyes imploring; if she’s lucky I may roar for the bobbies as I slide over the sill.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.254, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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