General Flashman remarks on the capacity of British prime ministers

. . . they took a cab to the famous club, where Sir Harry stared around the imposing hall and remarked that things weren’t what they had once been. ‘Saw Palmerston fall down that staircase — the whole damned way from top to bottom. Tight as a fiddler’s bitch. Finished up wrapped round that pillar there. Can’t see Asquith doing that, somehow. Rotten prime minister. D’you know, I presented him with a school prize once? Must be fifty years ago — ugly little swot he was then, and hasn’t improved over the years. Mind you, Balfour wouldn’t have been any better — “Pretty Fanny”, they used to call him. Only good thing I know about him was that he taught Asquith how to ride a bicycle. Argued some kind of capacity, I suppose — I’d sooner try to teach a whale to play the fiddle.’


Mr American, p.388, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



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Squiffy Asquith and the human hawk

. . . the defendants were represented by two of the best hatchet-men in the business, Charles Russell and young Asquith — you know the latter as the buffoon who infests Number 10 Downing Street at the moment, and my recollection of him is as a shining morning face to which I once presented a prize at the City of London School, but for all that he was accounted a sharp hand in court, while Russell was a human hawk, and looked it.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.248, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Princes or prime ministers

I should have known that it’s never safe to get within range of princes or prime ministers.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.28, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,princes, prime ministers.