Know you

    ‘Know you.’ he said accusingly. ‘But you’re not a bobby — too well-dressed. Army? No-o, too clever for that. Haven’t got the sneaky look of a politician, either, and I doubt if I owe you money, or I’d recognise you. Well, dammit, who are you?’


Mr American, p.385, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



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Stinging at the memory

It reminded me of the Madagascar forest, and you mayn’t believe it but I felt my eyes stinging at the memory of Elspeth blue-eyed and beautiful, smiling up at me with her golden hair tumbled about her head on the grass, her arms reaching up to me and those lovely lips parting . . . “My jo, my ain dear jo!”


Flashman on the March, p.135, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Beyond all doubt

And blessed if he wasn’t bright-eyed with memory. “Give me your hand, old comrade, and welcome indeed, for I never was so pleased to see anyone, I can tell you!”
     That was the moment when I knew, beyond all doubt, that the doom had come upon me yet again.



Flashman on the March, p.48, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Dooced appropriate

…for once I’d recognized his quotation — it had been framed on the wall of the hospital at Rugby, where I’d sobered up on that distant day when Arnold kicked me out . . . “Olim miminisse juvabit”,* and dooced appropriate, too, Seneca, if memory serves.


*It will be pleasant to remember former troubles — Virgil (not Seneca).


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.63, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Remembrance of things past

Any soldier will tell you that, in the heat of a fight, sights and sounds imprint themselves on your memory and stay vivid for fifty years . . . but you lose all sense of time.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.337, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Did they not Sir Harry?

. . . that glittering pyramid of light, broad as a crown piece, alive with an icy fire that seems to shine from its very heart. It’s a matchless, evil thing, and shouldn’t be a diamond at all, but a ruby, red as the blood of the thousands who’ve died for it. But it wasn’t that, or its terrible beauty, that had shaken me . . . it was the memory, all unexpected. Aye, I’d seen it before.
      “The Mountain of Light,” says the Queen complacently. “That is what the nabobs called it, did they not Sir Harry?”
      “Indeed, ma’am,” says I, a mite hoarse. “Koh-i-Noor.”


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.16-17, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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The Balaclava plain

…my luck had been stretched as long as a Jew’s memory, and I knew for certain that another trip across the Balaclava plain would be disaster for old Flashy.

Flashman at the Charge, p.11, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Balaclava, luck.