As quickly as horses

Good camels can cover the ground as quickly as horses, and we made our first-night camp in a little palm grove only a few miles from the lake.


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


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, camel.

In my seventieth year

Racing’s well enough when you’re young and riding yourself, but now that I was in my seventieth year and disinclined to back anything more mettlesome than an armchair,* I found it quite as interesting as a sermon in Gaelic.

* a docile horse


Flashman and the Tiger, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, racing.

A sort of English Texas

. . . nor do I enjoy the unsought hospitality of Society parvenus in the wilds of Yorkshire (a sort of English Texas peopled by coarse braggarts and one or two decent slow bowlers) with nothing to do but watch horses run in the pouring rain.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Yorkshire.

A besotted Bohemian

Well, I didn't, in fact, but I ain't a besotted Bohemian. He sighed, long and solemn, like an old horse farting.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.56, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, horse.

Good advice from Billy Russell

I’ve written about it at length elsewhere – the fearful havoc of embarking, with ships full of spewing soldiers rocking at anchor for days on end, the weeping women who were ordered to stay behind (although my little pal, Fan Duberly, sneaked aboard disguised as a washerwoman), the horses fighting and smashing in their cramped stalls, the hideous stink, the cholera corpses floating in the bay, Billy Russell standing on the quay with his note-book damning Lord Lucan’s eyes – ‘I have my duty, too my lord, which is to inform my readers, and if you don’t like what you’re doing being reported, why then, don’t do it! And that’s my advice to you!’ Of course he was daft and Irish, was Billy, but so was Lucan, and they stood and cussed each other like Mississippi pilots.

Flashman at the Charge, p.59, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Billy Russell, Crimean War.

What indeed

And what is there, I ask you, that a man will not dare, so long as he has a fast horse and a clear road out of town?

Royal Flash, p.241, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,dare.

The best troopers

And of course Lady Sale was to the fore, wearing an enormous turban and riding a tiny Afghan pony side-saddle. ‘I was saying to Lady McNaghten that I believe we wives would make the best troopers of all,’ she cries out. ‘What do you think, Mr Flashman?’
‘I’d take your Ladyship into my troop any time,’ says I, at which she simpered horribly – ‘but the other horses might be jealous,’ I says to myself quietly, at which the lancers set up a great laugh.

Flashman, p.178, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Florentia Sale, Lady Sale.