Academic jealousy

…he was still larding his conversation with Latin tags — he’d been a mighty scholar, you see, before they rode him out of Oxford on a rail, for garroting the Vice-chancellor or running guns into Wadham, likely, tho’ he always claimed it was academic jealousy.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.39, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Survive and prosper

      There’s no question that a public school education is an advantage. it may not make you a scholar or a gentleman or a Christian, but it does teach you to survive and prosper—and one other invaluable thing: style.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.148, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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They're called food ethnographers these days

…I could see at a glance he was one of those snoopopathic meddlers who strut about with a fly-whisk, and a notebook, prodding lies out of the niggers* and over-tipping the dragoman on college funds.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.18, Pan Books edition, 1983.

*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.



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Scholarly dedication

Close by me was Spring, bawling like a madman; he had his pepper-pot revolver in one hand, firing backwards towards the path, and by God, with the other he was trying to drag along one of the amazons he’d bought. the man’s dedication to scholarly research was incredible.

Flash For Freedom!, p.82, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Always the romantic

…where’s the fun if it’s all too easy, I told myself, and set to scheme how I might bring the lady to the sticking point, as we Shakespeare scholars say.

Flash For Freedom!, p.29, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Subtly laid schemes

Scholars, of course, won’t have it so. Policies they say, and the subtly laid schemes of statesmen, are what influences the destinies of nations; the opinions of intellectuals, the writings of philosophers, settle the fate of mankind. Well, they may do their share, but in my experience the course of history is as often settled by someone having a belly-ache, or not sleeping well, or a sailor getting drunk, or some aristocratic harlot waggling her backside.

Royal Flash, p.11, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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