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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Slippery diamond-slinger

As old Peacock says, respectable means rich — look at that slippery diamond-slinger Rhodes.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.43, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Many friends

“Yes, my bucko, I’m warm — and I draw enough water in this colony, as you’ll find if you cross me. Felicitas habet multos amicos,* you know!”


*Happiness has many friends.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.41-2, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Your glorious pedestal

“Aye,” says he sourly, looking me up and down, “I wish I’d a guinea for every poor bastard whose bones must have gone into making your glorious pedestal. Gaudetque viam fecisse ruina,* I’ll lay!”

*He rejoices to have made his way by ruin – Lucan.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.41, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Lecherous offal

“Aye, fronti nulla fides* might ha’ been coined for you, you lecherous offal!”


*There is no faith to be placed in the countenance



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.40, Harper Collins, 1995.



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He's not dead, he's resting

“Think you’re safe, don’t you, because mortuo leoni et lepores insultant,* is that it?”



*The lion being dead, even hares can insult him





Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.40, Harper Collins, 1995.


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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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Thunderbird Two pilot?

“Fuit Illium,* if you know your Virgil, which you never did, blast you!”


*Troy has been (i.e., the reason for dispute no longer exists).



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


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Tagging Flashy

“Well, nulla pallescere culpa,* my decorated hero, for it doesn’t matter a dam, d’ye see?


*Not to turn pale on an imputation of guilt – Horace




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


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Ich dien

      “Shut your gob!” Oriel manners still, I could see.


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



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Happy hour

      “Old shipmates, sir!” barks he, glaring as though I were a focsle rat. “Reunited after many years, eh, Flashman? Aye, gratis superveniet quae sperabitur hora!”*


*The happy hour will come, the more gratifying for being unexpected.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.38-9, Harper Collins, 1995.



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He was the Governor

But he was the Governor, and had just fed me, so I nodded attentively and said “I never knew that, sir,” and “Ye don’t say!” though I might as well have hollered “Whelks for sale!” for all he heard.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.34, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Saintly eyes

He was a slim, poetic-looking chap with saintly eyes, not yet fifty, and might have been a muff if you hadn’t known that he’d walked over half Australia, dying of thirst most of the time, and his slight limp was a legacy of an Aborigine’s spear in his leg.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.33, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Great gift

His great gift, I was told, was that he got on splendidly with savages — even Boers.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.30, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Flashman and truthiness

      The fact is, some truths don’t matter.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.24, Harper Collins, 1995.



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True words

…the only fly in the ointment as I rolled down to Calcutta had been the discovery that during my absence from England some scribbling swine had published his reminiscences of Rugby School, with me as the villain of the piece. A vile volume entitled Tom Brown’s Schooldays, on every page of which the disgusting Flashy was to be found torturing fags, shirking, toadying, lying, whining for mercy, and boozing himself to disgraceful expulsion — every word of it true, and all the worse for that.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.23, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Those fortunate few

…if life has taught me anything, it’s that the wealth and comfort of the fortunate few (who include our contented middle classes as well as the nobility) will always depend on the sweat and poverty of the unfortunate many, whether they’re toiling on plantations or licking labels in sweat shops at a penny a thousand. It’s the way of the world, and until Utopia comes, which it shows no sign of doing, thank God, I’ll just rub along with the few, minding my own business.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.22, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Frederick the Great

      “Who was Frederick the Great?”
      “A German king, John. Bit of a tick, I believe; used scent and played the flute.”



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.15, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Crowning reward

      I came back from the dark storm of Harper’s Ferry to the peaceful sunshine of Leicestershire, and the four small faces regarding me with the affectionate impatience that is the crowning reward of great-grandfatherhood .  . .  and the only pang is that at ninety-one you can’t hope to see ’em grow.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.14, Harper Collins, 1995.



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An appropriate inscription

…when she died in her sixty-sixth year, her tombstones was given the appropriate inscription: “Under this stone lies all that could die of Lady Sale”.*


*Please note, this is not taken from the Flashman Papers 1845-46 but quoted from the editor's footnotes (No. 9).



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.377, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Cheers Paddy

“Never trust a political,” says he. “Health Flashman.”




Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.358, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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No secrets

      I didn’t doubt his information — in a land of spies there are no secrets.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.356, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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No currency

Reputation and credit, there’s no currency to touch them.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.355, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Character and abilities

      When I think of the number of eminent men — and women — who have taken me at face value, and formed a high opinion of my character and abilities, it makes me tremble for my country’s future.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.352, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Warm feeling of survival

As I trotted through the lines I could feel that air of contented elation that comes at the end of a campaign: the men are tired, and would like to sleep for a year, but they don’t want to miss the warm feeling of survival and comradeship, so they lie blinking in the sun, or rouse themselves to skylark and play leapfrog.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.348-9, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




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Distance always lends enlightenment

…if enough of the brutes had escaped the whole beastly business would have been to do again, with consequent loss of British and Sepoy lives. That’s something the moralists overlook (or more likely don’t give a dam about) when they cry: “Pity the beaten foe!” What they’re saying, in effect, is: “Kill our fellows tomorrow rather than the enemy today.” But they don’t care to have it put to them like that; they want their wars won clean and comfortable, with a clear conscience. (Their conscience being much more precious than their soldiers’ lives, you understand.) Well, that’s fine, if you’re sitting in the Liberal Club with a bellyful of port on top of your dinner, but if you rang the bell and it was answered not by a steward with a napkin but an Akali with a tulwar, you might change your mind. Distance always lends enlightenment to the view, I’ve noticed.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.344-5, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




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Most wars

In most wars, you see, killing is only the means to a political end, but in the Sutlej campaign it was an end in itself.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.342, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




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Beaten by bayonets

Good bayonet fighters will beat swordsmen and spearmen every time…



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.338, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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A killing rage

      They fought like madmen — and perhaps that was their undoing, for whenever the attack was beaten back they leaped down into the trenches to mutilate our wounded. Well, you don’t do that to Atkins, Sepoy and Ghurka if you know what’s good for you; our people stormed back at ’em in a killing rage, and when the scaling-ladders wouldn’t reach they climbed on each other’s shoulders and on the piled dead, and fairly pitchforked the Sikhs our of their first line of entrenchments, almost without firing a shot.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.338, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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