Like an elderly ghost

      It’s a strange thing, but however funky you may be — and I’ll take all comers in that line — once you’re moving there’s a kind of controlled panic that guides your feet; I went up those stairs like an elderly ghost . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.305, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



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Backhanded tribute

It's a backhanded tribute to the memory of the late unlamented Rudi Von Starnberg that my first impulse on meeting his offspring was to look for the communication cord and bawl for help. Time was I’d ha’ done both, but when you've reached your sixties you've either learned to bottle your panic, sit tight, and think like blazes . . . or you haven't reached your sixties, mallum?*

* understand?


Flashman and the Tiger, p.77, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Good artillery

      There’s never a time when pain and fear don’t matter, but sometimes shock is so bewildering that you don’t think of them. One such time is when you wake up to find that good artillery has got your range and is pounding you to pieces; there’s nothing to be done, no time even to hope you won’t be hit, and you can’t hurl yourself to the ground and lie there squealing — not when you find you’re alongside Paddy Gough himself, and he’s pulling off his bandana and telling you to wrap it round your fin and pay attention.

Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.259, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Seeking sorrow and raving heroically

The terrible thing was that I remembered the battle very clearly, and my own incredible behaviour – I knew I’d gone bawling about like a Viking in drink, seeking sorrow and raving heroically in murderous rage, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It had been utterly against nature, instinct and judgement – and I knew it hadn’t been booze, because I hadn’t had any, and anyway the liquor hadn’t been distilled that could make me oblivious of self-preservation. It appalled me, for what security does a right-thinking coward have, if he loses his sense of panic?

Flashman at the Charge, pp.281-2, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,viking, coward.

Half panic, half lunacy

This myth called bravery, which is half panic, half lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.

Flashman, p.276, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.