Jingo and ginger

He’d given his troops jingo and ginger, and now he was striding off to his tent with a face like a wet week, leaving ’em stunned and silent with the fight knocked clean out of them.


Flashman on the March, p.219, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Mouthing the Agincourt speech

I can see him still; erect, head thrown back, eyes blazing, like the worst kind of actor mouthing the Agincourt speech to a crowd of yokels in a tent theatre in the backwoods.

Flashman's Lady, p.139, Pan edition, 1979.

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I’m a soldier, not a diplomat

‘Your highness,’ says I, ‘I can’t talk like Mr Erskine, or Captain Skene even. I’m a soldier, not a diplomat, so I won’t mince words.’ And thereafter I minced them for all I was worth…

Flashman in the Great Game, pp.80-81, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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High yet husky

Ko Dali’s daughter spoke for the first time, and I was surprised how high and yet husky her voice was – the kind that makes you think of French satin sofas, with the blinds down and purple wall-paper.

Flashman at the Charge, p.247, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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A great orator

   ‘And I’m warning you, Buck!’ Lincoln’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Oh, I know you, I reckon. You’re a real hard-barked Kentucky boy, own brother to the small-pox, weaned on snake juice and grizzly hide, aren’t you? You’ve killed more niggers than the dysentery, and your grandmother can lick any white man in Tennessee. You talk big, step high, and do what you please, and if any “legal beanpole” in a store suit gets in your way you’ll cut him right down to size, won’t you just? He’s not a practical man, is he? But you are, Buck – when you’ve got your gang at your back! Yes, sir, you’re a practical man, all right’
    Buck was mouthing at him, red-faced and furious, but Lincoln went on in the same hard voice.
   ‘So am I, Buck. And more – for the benefit of any shirt-tail chewbacon with a big mouth, I’m a who’s-yar boy from Indiana myself, and I’ve put down better men than you just by spittingteeth at them. If you doubt it, come ahead! You want these people – you’re going to take them?’ He gestured towards Cassy. ‘All right, Buck – you try it. Just – try it.
    The rest of the world decided that Abraham Lincoln was a great orator after his speech at Gettysburg. I realized it much earlier, when I heard him laying it over that gun-carrying bearded ruffian who was breathing brimstone at him.

Flash For Freedom!, p.239, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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