George MacDonald Fraser

“I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.”

“Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.”

“It may be tripe, but it's my tripe - and I do urge other authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.”

“But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.”

“Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced:"It’s very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop."I couldn’t believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. "Well, my lord, I dunno,” says I. "Tientsin ain’t much of a place, but I’ll see what I can drum up —""Michel’s been reading Doctor Thorne since Taku," cried he. "He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?" So I did, and had my ignorance, enlightened.”

“Tony Blair is not just the worst prime minister we've ever had, but by far the worst prime minister we've ever had. It makes my blood boil to think of the British soldiers who've died for that little liar.”

“If anything she was a shade too plump, but she knew the ninety-seven ways of making love that the Hindus are supposed to set much store by―though mind you, it is all nonsense, for the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed.”

“I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong”

“What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right... For better or worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our visions of the past than the commercial cinema.”

“We stood there for a full half hour, like so many scarecrows, while they jeered at us from a distance, and one or two of us were shot down.”

“I'm rather a cynic, I suppose. I do not believe in the niceness of humanity.”

“. . . what is thought now, and held to be universal truth, was not thought then, or true of that time.”

“I loathe all political parties, which I regard as inventions of the devil. My favourite prime minister was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing.”