Some thoughts on the cessation of the slave trade

      I think he was right; by the way, and I speak from experience, having shirked responsibility too often to count. But the Balllantynes and Legerwoods didn’t, and if the slave trade has been swept off the face of the seas, it hasn’t really been the work of reformers and statesmen with lofty ideals in London and Paris and Washington, but because a long-forgotten host of fairly feckless young Britons did it for fun. And you may tell the historians I said so.


Flashman on the March, p.20, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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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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Complete and unashamed

      There’s a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.310, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Statesmen and princes

Oh, I’d guessed there was steel inside my drunken, avid little houri, but hardly of the temper that could slaughter scores of thousands of men just for her own political convenience and personal comfort. Mind you, what other reasons do statesman and princes ever have for making war, when all the sham’s been stripped away?


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.205-06, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Bare-faced and grinning

That was Pam - and if anyone ever tells you that he was a politically unprincipled old scoundrel who carried things with a high and reckless hand, I can only say that it didn’t seem to work a whit worse than the policies of more high-minded statesman. The only difference I ever saw between them and Pam was that he did his dirty work bare-faced (when he wasn’t being deeper than damnation) and grinned about it.

Flashman in the Great Game, pp.27-8, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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Subtly laid schemes

Scholars, of course, won’t have it so. Policies they say, and the subtly laid schemes of statesmen, are what influences the destinies of nations; the opinions of intellectuals, the writings of philosophers, settle the fate of mankind. Well, they may do their share, but in my experience the course of history is as often settled by someone having a belly-ache, or not sleeping well, or a sailor getting drunk, or some aristocratic harlot waggling her backside.

Royal Flash, p.11, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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