Uneasliy adrift

      Ulysses S. Grant never called for help in his life, but just then I seemed to catch a glimpse within the masterful commander and veteran statesman, of the thin-skinned Scotch yokel from Ohio tanyard uneasily adrift in an old so-superior world which he’d have liked to despise but couldn’t help feeling in awe of.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.19, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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The great curse of the new world

…and everywhere the Great Curse of the New World, the American Child, in all its raucous, spoiled, undisciplined, selfish ghastliness, the female specimens keeping up an incessant high-pitched whine and the male infants racketing like cow-pokes on payday. There’s nothing wrong with grown Americans, by and large; you won’t find heartier men or bonnier women anywhere, but the only remedy I can see for their children is to run Herod for President.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.142-43, Harper Collins, 1995.


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At peace and dog-tired

…the storm of war and action hurtles you along in blood and thunder, seeking vainly for a hold to cling to, and then the wind drops, and in a moment you’re at peace and dog-tired, with your back to a gun-wheel at Gwalior, or closing your eyes in a corner seat of the Deadwood Stage, or drinking tea contentedly with an old Kirghiz bandit in a serai on the Golden Road, or sitting alone with the President of the United States at the end of a great war, listening to him softly whistle “Dixie”.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.287, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Burly and surly

Grant was the same burly, surly bargee I remembered, more like a city storekeeper than the first-rate soldier he’d been and the disillusioned President he was.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.229, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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I'd have made President

He considered me, the sharp, sleepy little eyes peeping out under the frayed stray brim. ‘Would that be Tom Little’s wagon you’re drivin’? Seems I know that broken spoke – an’ the horse.’
    For a moment my blood ran cold, and I stopped my hand from going to the pistol in the back of my belt.
   ‘Well, it was Tom Little’s wagon,’ says I. ‘Still will be, if he hadn’t loaned it me yesterday. When I take it back, it will be his again, I guess.’ If I’d stayed in that country, and learned to whittle with a Barlow knife, and chew tobacco, I’d have made President.

Flash For Freedom!, p.207, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,whittle, President,Barlow knife.