Some thoughts on the cessation of the slave trade

      I think he was right; by the way, and I speak from experience, having shirked responsibility too often to count. But the Balllantynes and Legerwoods didn’t, and if the slave trade has been swept off the face of the seas, it hasn’t really been the work of reformers and statesmen with lofty ideals in London and Paris and Washington, but because a long-forgotten host of fairly feckless young Britons did it for fun. And you may tell the historians I said so.


Flashman on the March, p.20, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A reluctant hand

. . . my tale of the strangest campaign in the whole history of British arms — and that takes in some damned odd affairs, a few of which I’ve borne a reluctant hand in myself. But Abyssinia took the cake, currants and all.


Flashman on the March, pp.3-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Sincerely mourned

…I doubt if any man in the history of the United States was more deeply or sincerely mourned — and I ain’t forgetting friend Abraham, either. He was even more detested in Dixie than J.B., and he was just a politician, while J.B. was a fighting man and a rebel, a combination which no American could resist.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.348, Harper Collins, 1995.


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The forgotten brigadier

      Historians say that on that one moment, as the Khalsa’s spearhead was rushing at our throat, rested the three centuries of British India. Perhaps. It was surely the moment in which Gough’s battered little army stared certain death and destruction in the face, and whatever may have settled our fate later, one man turned the hinge then and there. Without him, we (aye, and perhaps all of India) would have been swept away in bloody ruin. I’ll wager you’ve never heard of him, the forgotten brigadier, Mickey White.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.260, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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How I remember him

…he shrugged and we found ourselves grinning at each other across the flower-bed—odd, that’s how I remember him, not as the old man I saw last year, but as the ugly, bow-legged young brave, all Apache from boots to headband, so serious as he arranged the blooms just so, cleaning the earth from his knife and looking sour and pleased among his flowers. A strange memory in light of history—but then he’s still the Yawner to me, for all the world learned to call him Geronimo.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.171, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Infinitely greater

…I liked Abe Lincoln from the moment I first noticed him, leaning back in his chair with that hidden smile at the back of his eyes, gently cracking his knuckles. Just why I liked him I can’t say; I suppose in his own way he had the makings of as big a scoundrel as I am myself, but his appetites were different, and his talents infinitely greater. I can’t think of him as a good man, yet as history measures these things I suppose he did great good. Not that that excites my admiration unduly…

Flash For Freedom!, pp.126-27, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Abraham Lincoln.