In some disorder

. . . and the happy couple emerged, the bint in some disorder and Cavalry looking as though he’d just been ridden down by the Heavy Brigade.


Flashman on the March, p.174, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Wink, wink

. . . in Ab society, which as I’ve told you is probably the most immoral on earth (Cheltenham ain’t in it), rogering the hostess is almost obligatory,  part of the etiquette, like leaving cards, and not at all out of the way in a country where it’s considered a mortal insult to praise a woman’s chastity, since it implies that she’s not attractive enough to be galloped. Say no more.


Flashman on the March, p.169, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Perversely partial

. . . but she was a hearty piece of middle-aged Eve’s flesh of no remarkable allure — that she appealed to me was by the way; I’m a connoisseur of feminine beauty but no discrimination worth a dam, and anyway I’m perversely partial to royal rattle.


Flashman on the March, p.168, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Trout fishing in Africa

. . . and enjoying the aforesaid bout of hareem gymnastics, in the course of which we rolled down the bank into the water, not that Uliba seemed to notice, the dear enamoured girl, for she thrashed about in the shallows like a landed trout.


Flashman on the March, p.101, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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No thought to spare

. . . Flashy in ecstatio has no thought to spare for tottering thrones or collapsing empires, let alone beastly rivals collecting their well-deserved rations.



Flashman on the March, p.99, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Belgravian sisters

It was being borne in on me that the moral climate of Abysinnia was not quite that of our own polite society — not that Uliba’s Belgravian sisters are averse to a cut off the joint from time to time, but they know enough to keep quiet about it.


Flashman on the March, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Rolling in the deep

Very discreet, mind; a ship’s a small place, and chaste young ladies tend to be excitable the first few times and need to be hushed. Elspeth and my second wife, Duchess Irma, were like ecstatic banshees, I remember.


Flashman on the March, p.8, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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In days gone by

You’ll recall Cumming was among those I’d suspected of dancing the honeymoon hornpipe with my dear one in days gone by . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.265, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Worn uncommon well

      By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn't care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen — she'd performed like a demented houri then and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century?

Flashman and the Tiger, p.224, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A notorious wastrel

When you're a queen of unblemished virtue, devoted to Duty and the high moral tone, and your son and Heir to the Throne is a notorious wastrel who counts all time lost when he ain't stuffing, swilling, sponging off rich toad-eaters and rogering anything in skirts, you're apt to be censorious . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.213, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Pomading his eyebrows

      But my conversational bolt was shot. For once I was at a loss — as who would not be, on discovering that while he was bulling a chap's wife all over the shop and probably making a hell of an uproar, the chap himself was virtually next door brushing his teeeth or pomading his eyebrows . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.188, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A true meeting of minds

It was a true meeting of minds, for I doubt if a woman ever stripped faster from full court regalia, and we revelled in each other like peasants in a hayrick . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.187, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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So damned military

      “I bumped into the sergeant of the guard, accidental-a-purpose. A waxed-moustached old turnip-head who's so damned military he probably rides his wife by the numbers — almost ruptured himself comin’ to attention when I happened by.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.123, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Rendered maudlin

She was anxious for me, you see, the besotted little aristo — it's remarkable how even the most worldly of women can be rendered maudlin by Adam's arsenal.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.115, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A savage and a mackerel

      Count Shuvalov, she informed me, was a sacred perverted beast, a savage and a mackerel and a swine of tastes indescribable .... demanding from her an Arabian Nights performance which I doubt even Dick Burton had ever heard of. He had also insisted that they smear each other all over with quince jam, to which he was partial, and while much of it had been removed in the ensuing frolic, I noticed that she still had a tendency to attract fluff and other light debris as she raged to and from the kitchen with hot kettles for her bath.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.35, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A condition of swoon

...that inevitably led to another glorious thrashing-match which restored her amour-propre and left me in what I once heard a French naval officer describe as a condition of swoon.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.34, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Never mind the Moulin Rouge

My advice to young chaps is to never mind the Moulin Rouge and Pigalle, but make for some diplomatic mêlée on the Rue de Lisbonne, catch the eye of a well-fleshed countess, and ere the night’s out you’ll have learned something you won’t want to tell your grandchildren.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.16, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Where's the beef?

…never mind the pasture it comes from, it’s the meat that matters.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.47, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Added spice

…I’m not one of those who count danger an added spice, least of all in houghmagandie, as Elspeth used to call it whenever I got her tipsy


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.44, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Scrubbing away

      I was scrubbing away, whistling “Drink, puppy, drink”, when I heard a hand-bell tinkle, in the boudoir. You’ll have to wait a while, my dear, thinks I, but then I heard voices and realized she had summoned Mangla, and was giving instructions in a dreamy, exhausted whisper.
      “You may dismiss Rai and the Python,” murmurs she. “I shall have no need of them today . . . perhaps not tomorrow . . .”
      I should think not, indeed. So I sang “Rule Britannia”.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.155, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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