Earthly paradise

      I’m no old Africa hand, and what I’d seen of Abyssinia so far had jaundiced rather than impressed, but I’m bound to say that the Lake Tana country is as close to earthly paradise as I’d ever struck, for scenery at least. From Azez to Gorgora on the northern shore is nothing out of the ordinary, but the lake itself beats anything in Switzerland or Italy, a great blue shimmering inland sea fringed by tropical forest, hills, and meadows, for all the world like a glorious garden of exotic flowers and shrubs in groves of splendid trees and ferns.


Flashman on the March, p.128, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, paradise.

Destruction of the Summer Palace

“I am therefore requesting the Commander-in-Chief —” he nodded towards Grant — “to take the requisite steps for the complete destruction of the Summer Palace.”
      My first thought was that I hadn’t heard right; my second, what a perfectly nonsensical idea: someone murders twenty people, so you plough up his garden.


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.274-5, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, garden.