Sherlock Holmes versus Harry Flashman

 . . . “besides, this is a nautical, not a military man; he is not English, but either American or German — probably the latter, since he has certainly studied at a second-rate German university, but undoubtedly he has been to America quite lately. He is known to the police, is currently working as a ship’s steward, or some equally menial capacity at sea — for I observe that he has declined even from his modest beginnings — and will, unless I am greatly mistaken, be in Hamburg by the beginning of next week — provided he wakes up in time. More than that,” says the know-all ignoramus, “I cannot tell you from a superficial examination. Except, of course, for the obvious fact that he found his way here via Piccadilly Circus.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.310, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Beaten by bayonets

Good bayonet fighters will beat swordsmen and spearmen every time…



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.338, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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A dishonest life

I have observed, in the course of a dishonest life, that when a rogue is outlining a treacherous plan, he works harder to convince himself than to move his hearers.

Flashman, p.148, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Small change of a country's life

…I listened to Burnes and sniffed the wind. I took Ilderim with me a good deal, and sometimes his Gilzais, too, and they taught me some of the lore of the hills, and the ways of the people – who mattered, and what tribes were better to deal with, and why, and how the Kohistanis were more friendly disposed to us than the Abizai were, and which families were at feud with each other, and how the feeling ran about the Persians and the Russians, and where the best horses could be obtained, and how millet was grown and harvested: all the trivial information which is the small change of a country’s life.

Flashman, p.110, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.