![]() ![]() Billeted on a Renfrew industrialist during the Chartist troubles, he is persuaded to make an honest woman of his host’s beautiful bone-headed daughter when her uncle also threatens to call him out. At the end of it, a youthful hero of the First Afghan War, that greatest of military cock-ups, he is receiving the Queen’s medal from the Queen’s own pudgy hands later it appears he is due for the VC, perhaps in the Crimea and certainly in circumstances that will better merit his being put up against a wall and shot for cowardice.Īfter Rugby and a brimstone pi-jaw from Arnold he fancies the Army, a safe billet in Canterbury with Cardigan’s dashing “Cherry-pickers.” Called out by a brother officer over a tart “Flashy” makes a name for magnanimity and iron nerve by bribing a toady to tamper with the pistols, “deloping,” and afterwards, of course, disowning the bribe. In what one hopes is only a first instalment he is reviewing, as a major-general, a long despicable life a little lower than the hyena’s and crowned with riches and honour. ![]() The back is an important part of the anatomy for Flashman, women on theirs, and his own, to save his skin, firmly presented to the enemy. This depicts our hero peacocking in military regalia, at his feet a dusky damsel of undisguised charms, at his back a squadron of cavalry. ![]() Introduced with a nice, poker-faced factitiousness the spoof might work for half a page if it were not for the jacket. ![]()
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