Unimpeachable source

. . . and the source was unimpeachable — I’ve lived with her seventy years, after all, and know that while she may suppress a little veri and suggest a touch of falsi on occasion, Elspeth ain’t a liar.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.254, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, liar.

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.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, lawyer.

A pint of port

So there he was, reputation blasted, and nothing for it, you’d have thought, but to order a pint of port and a pistol for breakfast or join the Foreign Legion.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.247, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



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A prime subject

It was bound to get out — as I’d determined it should from the moment I’d stood in Gordon-Cumming’s presence, weighed him up, and realised what a prime subject he was for shoving down the drain.


Flashman and the Tiger, p246, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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They don't like it up 'em

     That did the trick: Bertie started as though I'd put a bayonet into his leg . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.244, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Suspicious agricultural activity

I’ve told you my score against Gordon-Cumming — a natural detestation of his supercilious vanity, his unconcealed dislike of me, above all the suspicion that he’d ploughed with my heifer . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.240, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, vanity.

Bellowing his grievance

Had I ever, I wondered, encountered such an immortally conceited ass with a truer touch for self-destruction? George Custer came to mind. Aye put him and Gordon-Cumming on the edge of a precipice and I’d not care to bet which would tumble first into the void, bellowing his grievance.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.240, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, conceited.

Titled fury

      Talk about a woman scorned; their fury ain’t in it with a Scotch Baronet’s wounded self-esteem.



Flashman and the Tiger, p.240, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Always been ivory

      The deuce of it is, when Elspeth turns a conversation topsy-turvy, all wide-eyed innocence, you can never be sure whether it’s witlessness or guile. She’d always been ivory from her delightful neck upwards, but that don’t mean she can’t wheedle a duck from a pond when so minded.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.234, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Words can put you on the run

It was like talking to a backward Bushman.



Flashman and the Tiger, p.233, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Try a little tenderness

      She took her lower lip gently in her teeth — a tiny gesture of puzzlement which has been turning my heart over since 1839.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.232, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, heart.

A near thing

      I love her dearly, far beyond any creature I’ve ever known, and I can prove it, for never once in almost seventy years of married life have I taken her by the throat. Mind you, it’s been a near thing, once or twice.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.232, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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We ain’t top-drawer

      She’s God’s own original snob, my little Paisley princess — as though her mill-owning father had been a whit better than the Wilsons. But the little skinflint had collared a peerage in his declining years, you see, and she seemed to think that his coronet and cash, with my V.C. and military rank, to say nothing of her own occasional intimacy with the Queen, raised us above the common herd. Which I guess they did, in an odd way — or if not above, apart at least. We ain’t top-drawer, but there’s no denying we’re different.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.229, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Jingling her loot

      “Och, isn’t he the wee duck?” sighs she, jingling her loot as he hobbled away. “Aye, weel, mony a mickle mak’s a muckle, as Papa used to say.” She slipped it into her bag and broke into civilised speech.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.229, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Bellies and loins

      Berkeley Levett, a sound muttonhead in Cumming’s regiment, and presumably as well disposed to his chief as subalterns ever are, given that Guards officers are usually incapable of any feeling outside their bellies and loins.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.227, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, feeling.

Tan Tan Tivvy Tally Ho

. . . Lycett Green, a stiffish, old young man, well pleased with himself and his position as master of foxhounds in some northern swamp. In my experience there are dolts, pompous dolts and M.F.Hs . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.227, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Word of a gentleman

I’ve also known from the age of three that “honour” and “solemn oath” and “word of a gentleman” are mere piss in the wind of greed, ambition, and fear.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.227, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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A pleasing gift

Aye. She’s always had the priceless gift of pleasing, has Elspeth, and making people laugh — for she’s a damned funny woman when she wants to be, a top-hole mimic, and all the more engaging because she plainly hasn't got two brains to rub together. “Never see her but it sets me in humour,” Palmerston used to say. That was her talent, to make folk happy.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.225, 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 loving couple

. . . she had suddenly dropped him like a hot rivet, even cut him dead in the Row. I never knew why, and didn't inquire; the less I knew of her transgressions (and she of mine) the better — I reckon that's why we've always been such a loving couple.


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


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Chicken broth and flannel

. . .  I'd shared Langtry with him, behind his back, and done my duty by pretty Daisy — as who hadn't ? Not La Keppel, though; she was after my time, worse luck, not heaving into view until I'd reached what Macaulay calls the years of chicken broth and flannel, when you realise how dam’ ridiculous you'd look chasing dollymops young enough to be your daughter, and seek solace in booze, baccy, and books. Regrettable, of course, but less tiring and expensive.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.223, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Babbling Brooke

. . . Daisy, who was known as Babbling Brooke, was a sort of mad socialist — even today, when she's Countess of Warwick, no less, she still raves in a ladylike way about the workers, enough said. At the time of Tranby she was a stunning looker, rich as Croesus, randy as a rabbit, and Prince Bertie's mount of the moment — indeed, I ain’t sure she wasn't the love of his life . . .

Flashman and the Tiger, p.223, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Camps and courts of the mighty

You may think this a tame enough occupation for one who has assisted at as many major catastrophes as I have, and a poor setting after the camps and courts of the mighty, but I was getting on, you know, and as the Good Book says, there's a time for racketing about crying Ha-ha! among the trumpets, and a time for sitting back with your feet dipped in butter watching others fall in the mire.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, tame.