Growing old disgracefully

There was the sound of a newspaper being violently crumpled, a creaking of springs, and elderly arthritic gasps, and then a man emerged from behind the screen. He was extremely old and extremely large; Mr Franklin had an impression of stalwart height, and massive shoulders encased in a beautifully-cut frock coat of antique design, with a flower in its button-hole; above, reared a striking head of silver hair framing a lined, mottled face half-concealed by magnificent flowing white whiskers. It was the face of an aged, inebriated satyr, with a prominent, heavily-veined nose and dark, bloodshot eyes which glared past Mr Franklin at the conversing couple . . .


Mr American, p.184, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


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Jingo and ginger

He’d given his troops jingo and ginger, and now he was striding off to his tent with a face like a wet week, leaving ’em stunned and silent with the fight knocked clean out of them.


Flashman on the March, p.219, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Surveying the distance

She was in profile, surveying the distance with a chilling contempt which sat perfectly on a rather horsey face with a curved high-bridged nose. Minor Mittel European royalty to the life, with the same stench-in-the-nostrils look...


Flashman and the Tiger, p.50, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



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Brave in buckskin

I raised an eyebrow myself when the boy general arrived a few days later, all brave in fringed buckskin and red scarf over his uniform, but with a face like a two-day corpse.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.288, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Dinner in style

The chiefs came to dinner in style, six of them all in buckskins and feathers, led by the famous Oglala, Red Cloud, a grim savage with a face you could have used to split kindling.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.235, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Half the art

      If half the art of survival is running, the other half is keeping a straight face. I can’t count the number of times my fate has depended on my response to some unexpected and abominable proposal—like the night Yakub Beg suggested I join a suicidal attempt to scupper some Russian ammunition ships, or Sapten’s jolly notion about swimming naked into a Gothic castle full of Bismark’s thugs, or Brooke’s command to me to lead a charge against a headhunter’s stockade. Jesu, the times we have seen.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.43, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Country folk

He was a peasant, with a face like a walnut, and when he saw me he brought up short and stood glowering at me, the way country folk do at everyone who hasn’t got dung on his boots.

Royal Flash, p.187, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

A fool's face

'I've seen you, Flashman, remember? Hah-ha! And you’ve got what they call "a fool's face". No disrespect: it means you look honest.'

Flashman, p.91, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,face,fool,honest.