The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 16, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #47 ｜ Royal Flash with Dan Tubb


Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

166.816

Word count

4,903

Sentence count

331


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about the
00:00:18.180 second novel of the Flashman Papers, Royal Flash. And once again, who better to discuss it with
00:00:24.960 then The Office's very own scoundrel and man of the world, Dan.
00:00:29.640 Thank you, Dan.
00:00:30.120 You are.
00:00:30.760 Hurrah.
00:00:31.680 Nice sabre.
00:00:32.480 Thank you.
00:00:32.900 I thought it appropriate for the subject matter.
00:00:35.800 Yes.
00:00:36.480 So, look, it's been obviously a good number of episodes now
00:00:40.880 since we sat down and discussed the first, the OG.
00:00:44.300 Have the audience been good enough to get another Flashman book?
00:00:47.040 We are definitely backed by popular demand.
00:00:49.720 Right.
00:00:50.200 In fact, there's a whole sort of little series that I've started.
00:00:54.440 I've sowed the seeds of.
00:00:55.980 Like, I think episode 10 of Chronicles,
00:00:59.560 Bo and I covered the first of the Master and Commander novels.
00:01:03.540 Oh, they were right.
00:01:04.240 Yeah, I'll give you that.
00:01:05.000 Yeah, and I just haven't got round to getting to the next one.
00:01:07.620 And then there's Sharp and Hornblower.
00:01:10.060 Yes, they're quite good as well.
00:01:11.440 But the thing was with this, and I do love those,
00:01:14.800 and I really do want to return to them at some point.
00:01:17.300 Yeah.
00:01:17.800 So, you know, we've done Macbeth.
00:01:19.960 We've done, you know, more ancient Greek stuff.
00:01:21.900 We've just, I've had a great time here.
00:01:23.340 But for months now, I've been just thinking,
00:01:26.720 God, I want to read the next Flashman novel.
00:01:29.520 Of course you do, sir.
00:01:30.960 So here we are talking all about Royal Flash.
00:01:35.100 Now, this one came out the year after in 1970.
00:01:39.120 And intriguingly as well,
00:01:40.840 is the only Flashman novel to have ever been adapted into a film.
00:01:45.620 Oh, was it?
00:01:46.380 Yes.
00:01:47.360 I've not seen that.
00:01:48.420 Yes.
00:01:49.940 Honestly, it was kind of fascinating.
00:01:52.380 I haven't watched all of it.
00:01:53.700 I watched parts of it.
00:01:55.320 But maybe that tells you in and of itself.
00:01:56.940 Do they really capture what a complete bastard he is?
00:02:00.340 Because that's the key to the story.
00:02:02.360 He's a complete piece of shit.
00:02:05.080 That's why I love him.
00:02:06.240 Well, exactly.
00:02:07.380 But they have to tone down his sexual lust and all these sorts of things.
00:02:13.480 And it just doesn't work.
00:02:15.680 Even though, actually, it was directed by Richard Lester,
00:02:18.740 of an original
00:02:20.980 Christopher Reeve Superman thing.
00:02:23.160 And it also had in it
00:02:24.660 Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange,
00:02:27.420 Oliver Reed
00:02:28.420 as Bismarck,
00:02:31.080 and, oh gosh, what's her name?
00:02:32.600 Bond Girl. Brit Eklund
00:02:34.800 as
00:02:35.740 Duchess Irma. Oh, Irma.
00:02:38.420 So it had a great
00:02:40.380 cast going for it. There was a lot of reasons
00:02:42.600 why it should have gone right, but frankly
00:02:44.600 it was
00:02:46.340 such a... It wasn't necessarily
00:02:48.700 a disaster like well it got mixed reviews but but the main point was that for george mcdonald
00:02:55.760 fraser himself he swore that another flashman film would never be made so long as he was alive
00:03:01.620 right so the one guy you really had to win over with it uh they failed to yes and look the the
00:03:08.240 reason that we have the flashman books is because he wrote them in 1970 there is no way you get it
00:03:15.140 You get away with that sort of book today.
00:03:17.960 And as for making a film, I mean, the one where he does the slavers
00:03:23.720 and he travels to Africa and then onto the continent,
00:03:26.460 I suppose there would be some DEI roles in that.
00:03:28.980 Yes.
00:03:29.600 I mean, if they try to make it today, they'd want to make,
00:03:33.040 oh, I don't know, they'd want to make his wife black or something.
00:03:35.820 And if you know anything about Flashman, that is so incongruous,
00:03:41.040 that's not going to fly.
00:03:42.120 No, no, definitely not.
00:03:43.960 But that's all right.
00:03:45.140 because we have an exceptional series of novels
00:03:48.240 and they're able to take the time with it.
00:03:51.500 They're able to get inside,
00:03:52.940 because it's obviously written as if it's his memoirs,
00:03:55.940 they're able to get inside the head of the Flashman character
00:03:59.640 in a way that the medium of film I just don't think could ever do.
00:04:03.320 And of course the great genies of these books,
00:04:04.780 it's not just getting inside the head of the character that he's created,
00:04:08.440 it's getting inside the head of real historical characters.
00:04:11.320 so you know the last one we talked about the the retreat from afghanistan first flashman book
00:04:17.140 all of those conversations that you have between the high level players all of those are accurate
00:04:23.520 and when i say accurate i mean i don't mean down to the world because what we have is we have letters
00:04:27.100 from the real historical character who said look i met with so and so and so and so and so and so
00:04:31.500 we discussed this we argued about this um and we agreed this and that happens in the book it's just
00:04:38.840 that he doesn't do it in that formal, you know, English as in writing a memoir version.
00:04:44.660 He brings it to life and there's discussion, there's back and forth, there's insults,
00:04:48.400 there's kind of, he brings the conversation to life, but the outcome of the conversation
00:04:52.200 and the decisions made and the actions that follow it, all of those are historically accurate.
00:04:57.460 Right.
00:04:57.780 So he's not just bringing to life Flashman, he's bringing to life real historical characters.
00:05:02.280 Now, for a while, I wasn't a huge fan of this particular book in the whole Flashman series.
00:05:07.940 Oh, really?
00:05:08.600 And I'll tell you why, because this one is not a historical story.
00:05:13.140 No.
00:05:13.620 So with his second book, what he decided to do
00:05:15.840 is he decided to basically do a parody of The Prisoner of Zelda.
00:05:20.300 Zender.
00:05:20.780 Zender, yes.
00:05:21.760 Quite right, yeah, I'm thinking of a Nintendo game, aren't I?
00:05:23.640 Yes, which is fair.
00:05:25.020 Yeah, so he did a parody of that, and that is a fictional story.
00:05:29.700 Now, because he's John Fraser MacDonald,
00:05:32.320 he still wove in real historical figures.
00:05:36.400 Great selection of them, too.
00:05:37.500 Yes, Lohleman has, obviously, Otto von Bismarck.
00:05:40.780 They're all real historical characters.
00:05:43.120 But he betrays them earlier in life before they became particularly famous.
00:05:47.020 And so he captures, as far as we can tell,
00:05:50.960 entirely accurate to what their personality could well have been.
00:05:54.500 But it's like an AI doing an approximation or something.
00:05:58.800 I see what you mean.
00:06:00.080 He's done a sensible approximation of what Otto von Bismarck
00:06:04.820 would have been like in his sort of late 20s.
00:06:07.500 yeah well i i don't think it's um an entirely untruthful depiction like there are certain things
00:06:13.220 oh yeah bismarck says in this novel yeah yeah that really feels like that that sounds like
00:06:17.700 that sounds like bismarck yeah but but the but the the later part of the story when it sort of
00:06:21.860 develops that is uh that is a little bit more made up um but actually on on rereading it i thought
00:06:28.800 no actually it is it is i was being a bit too harsh on it but not being history it is just a
00:06:34.140 bloody good story it is and is it enjoyable read it is but also as well because a lot of the uh
00:06:39.760 places in it are uh are made up and a lot of the characters are made up so just just for example
00:06:45.620 uh one of the main um um duchies that we're going to talk about strafans is a fictitious place yes
00:06:52.680 the duchess who lives at irma is a fictional woman she wasn't a historical figure and indeed
00:06:58.180 the man that Flashman ends up
00:07:00.320 pretending to have to be, Carl Gustaf
00:07:02.420 of minor Danish
00:07:04.480 nobility, sorry, royalties
00:07:06.180 rather, hence the title of the book
00:07:08.220 is also made up.
00:07:10.060 But this actually, I quite enjoyed
00:07:12.180 that on this occasion because
00:07:14.340 in the first one, if you know
00:07:16.340 the history, you know where all
00:07:18.240 of this is leading to and
00:07:19.760 Fraser manages to play on that in such a way
00:07:22.340 that it builds the anticipation
00:07:24.160 because you know that all of the men
00:07:26.080 exiling from Afghanistan are going to get
00:07:28.240 massacred. And so it puts almost
00:07:30.340 like this Alfred Hitchcock-esque
00:07:32.820 ticking time bomb beneath
00:07:34.440 the table. In the real history,
00:07:36.480 one surgeon, one man
00:07:38.640 survived
00:07:39.620 whichever Lord North Army.
00:07:42.460 Luckiest man in the world.
00:07:43.580 Whereas in the Flashman version, it's one surgeon
00:07:46.180 plus Flashman.
00:07:47.480 But otherwise, yeah, it's the same story.
00:07:50.460 Yes. But with this one,
00:07:52.200 because a lot of it is fictionalised
00:07:54.340 and the places he goes to,
00:07:55.780 you can tell that he's really just having fun with...
00:07:59.400 He's developing the character.
00:08:00.700 Yeah, just finding outcomes for different fates,
00:08:03.100 different gruesome fates,
00:08:04.260 like, you know, some of Bismarck's henchmen
00:08:08.060 and stuff like that.
00:08:09.100 Yeah, these are great characters.
00:08:10.560 And it's lovely watching Flashmen evolve as well,
00:08:14.680 because, you know, as we talked about last time,
00:08:17.200 he is a womaniser.
00:08:18.740 Oh, yes.
00:08:19.520 And a cheat and a bastard and a backstabber.
00:08:23.040 And he is a coward.
00:08:24.340 That's a key part of his character.
00:08:25.760 He's a complete coward.
00:08:26.900 But he is a temperamental coward, not an instinctual coward.
00:08:30.120 Because in this, he has no choice at certain points but to fight.
00:08:34.600 And when he does have to fight, if his back's to the wall,
00:08:37.640 he's actually quite brave in that.
00:08:40.260 He's quite decisive.
00:08:40.920 He fights smart.
00:08:41.760 Yes.
00:08:42.160 He fights smart.
00:08:43.000 But as soon as the opportunity comes to throw one of his allies
00:08:47.780 under the bus and do a legger, that's it.
00:08:50.840 He's off.
00:08:51.340 Yes.
00:08:51.680 Yes.
00:08:51.940 Yes. So let's start talking about what happened. So the novel picks off almost immediately after the events of the first novel, which we'll remember, because you all, of course, watched the original Chronicles that we did on it, didn't you?
00:09:07.320 that flashman is a celebrated hero this is completely undeserved by the way yes but this
00:09:15.540 just happened to be the last man alive in a fort storms by the afghanis and when he came to they
00:09:22.800 all got the impression that he was basically holding out single-handed and he played into
00:09:27.620 it marvelously and britain looking for a hero decided to basically anoint him the disaster and
00:09:33.320 Yes, it was a catastrophe.
00:09:35.040 We need a hero to bring something out of this.
00:09:37.400 So he was basically anointed a national hero
00:09:39.660 and he was canny enough to go along with it.
00:09:42.100 So he comes back with this completely undeserved acclaim
00:09:46.080 and he comes back to his Scotch wife
00:09:49.100 who was kind of forced into a shotgun marriage
00:09:51.300 because whilst on assignment in Glasgow,
00:09:55.200 he kind of diddle one of the local landowner's daughters
00:09:57.780 and basically got dragooned into marrying her,
00:10:00.060 which actually turns out to be quite helpful
00:10:01.820 because his old man goes bust
00:10:04.000 and his Scotch relatives are keeping him in the clink.
00:10:06.520 So they're keeping him in the coinage.
00:10:08.840 But the only problem with Elspeth,
00:10:10.840 lovely and stupid as he is,
00:10:12.500 she's a complete troller.
00:10:13.860 So he gets back and it becomes quite evident to him
00:10:18.160 that his wife is sort of putting through the mattress
00:10:20.540 all about town.
00:10:22.240 And, you know, what's he to do about it?
00:10:23.960 Because he can't get rid of her.
00:10:26.220 Because, you know, the Scottish...
00:10:28.440 He's indebted to his grouchy, miserable, lonely...
00:10:31.680 moving Presbyterian in-laws.
00:10:34.060 And he looks at this situation.
00:10:35.460 He's like, well, I'm certainly not getting by
00:10:37.140 on half-lieutenant's pay while I'm not on deployment.
00:10:41.120 And I'm certainly not going on deployment
00:10:42.520 because I'm a coward.
00:10:43.620 So I've got no choice but to put up with a wife.
00:10:46.140 And actually, he does still quite like her anyway
00:10:47.660 because she's a beautiful idiot.
00:10:49.220 That's his type.
00:10:50.320 She's easy company.
00:10:51.540 Yes, exactly.
00:10:52.760 So he thinks to himself,
00:10:54.720 how am I going to remedy this situation?
00:10:57.580 Well, of course, they're whores for that.
00:10:58.780 So off he goes to a card house
00:11:00.940 with his friend Speedy Cut.
00:11:02.300 Yes.
00:11:03.200 And because he's a gentleman, you know.
00:11:06.320 An illegal card house.
00:11:07.880 An illegal card house, yes.
00:11:09.560 Now, because he is a gentleman,
00:11:12.520 you know, he doesn't like to rush to these things.
00:11:14.600 So he's upstairs playing cards with the whores
00:11:16.380 and his friend Speedy Cut.
00:11:17.640 When the constabulary arrive to do a raid
00:11:20.980 on the illegal card house.
00:11:22.460 Yes.
00:11:22.920 Now, a few twists and turns aside,
00:11:24.680 I shan't spoil it,
00:11:25.640 but he almost manages to get away,
00:11:29.620 but ends up with the constabulary giving him chase off down the street.
00:11:34.840 So off he goes.
00:11:36.180 And the way he sort of extracts himself's situation,
00:11:38.900 as well as obviously throwing his friend under the bus.
00:11:41.820 Sorry, I'd just love to focus in on that moment for a second as well.
00:11:45.440 One thing is that at the card house,
00:11:48.440 Flashman points to the fact that actually,
00:11:51.180 look, I am existing at the tail end of a glorious era right now.
00:11:56.420 He's like, I am indulging in the greatest age,
00:12:00.880 which was just Georgian debauchery, right?
00:12:04.220 Where everyone just had a bit of fun.
00:12:06.800 Everyone was, you know, just tastefully, Englishly, of course.
00:12:10.860 It was tasteful English debauchery.
00:12:12.940 Debauchery, but with good manners, yes.
00:12:15.940 But Victoria is on the throne now,
00:12:18.540 and everyone's got to stick up their butts,
00:12:20.220 and all of the morals are getting stuffy.
00:12:22.600 And so Flashman is actually pinpointing
00:12:24.660 that there has just been a very psychological change beginning.
00:12:28.480 He can see the culture shifting.
00:12:30.080 Right.
00:12:30.500 And he's determined to make the most of the debauchery
00:12:33.040 while he's still living large.
00:12:34.600 And so, as you say, when he is being pursued by the policemen
00:12:39.160 down the streets trying to get away
00:12:42.560 because of seeing him at this illegal place,
00:12:45.760 Speedy Court says to him,
00:12:46.800 because Flash obviously had his leg broke,
00:12:49.720 Flashman had his leg broke
00:12:50.780 when he heroically defended Piper's force near Jalalabad.
00:12:57.920 He's not able to outrun the police.
00:13:00.460 And so Speedercut says, oh, I'll hold them off.
00:13:02.460 I'll have a fight with them.
00:13:03.820 And the Flashman being the Flashman was like, yeah, all right.
00:13:06.500 If you're stupid enough to stick your neck out for me,
00:13:10.140 I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
00:13:12.760 Yeah, you Flashman.
00:13:13.640 Which is hilarious as well, because actually with Flashman's injury,
00:13:18.400 Speedy Cook could have easily left him behind
00:13:21.700 and just gone off himself to leave Flashman to be caught.
00:13:25.500 But heroically, he's looking out for his friend
00:13:27.920 with a friendship that is entirely unreciprocal.
00:13:31.340 Oh, yes.
00:13:32.080 And just instant comedy.
00:13:34.440 Oh, yeah.
00:13:34.940 I mean, the complete bastard that he is.
00:13:37.840 But yeah, absolutely.
00:13:39.380 So he heads off.
00:13:41.740 He gets away from the police, but not quite.
00:13:44.140 Because again, like you said, he's still got his leg injury.
00:13:46.480 Yeah.
00:13:46.580 and he notices an empty carriage outside her house.
00:13:51.180 So he ducks in there only for that carriage
00:13:54.020 to then very shortly after attempt to be occupied
00:13:56.860 by the genuine inhabitants of it.
00:14:00.600 And just his luck, it turns out to be an incredibly beautiful woman.
00:14:05.600 Just his luck.
00:14:06.360 Yes, I remember her by her name that she went by later on, Lola Montez.
00:14:10.420 But Rosanna James.
00:14:11.980 Rosanna James.
00:14:12.900 Because she's married to a British officer.
00:14:15.160 Captain James
00:14:16.780 soon to be a very much divorced
00:14:19.400 Captain James
00:14:20.320 and she's being escorted
00:14:23.360 by a young Prussian gentleman
00:14:25.700 who we later
00:14:27.800 discover to be Otto von
00:14:29.760 Bismarck of
00:14:31.160 German fame
00:14:33.880 bit of a state
00:14:35.500 as in through sheer tyranny of
00:14:37.600 will he managed to
00:14:39.900 forge Germany through
00:14:41.680 as he gave in his speech blood and
00:14:43.720 iron into a nation that would change the course of history.
00:14:49.880 I mean, Bismarck is clearly a character of transhuman will and purpose.
00:14:57.620 And Flashman manages to, well, George Fraser MacDonald manages to capture that early on.
00:15:02.840 What must a man like this have been like in his late 20s?
00:15:06.580 Right.
00:15:07.160 The steely single purpose.
00:15:08.760 Anyway, so Bismarck is having none of this, but he is a right Prussian prude, and whatever her name is, Mrs. James.
00:15:17.240 Yes.
00:15:17.920 I mean, she's a high-spirited young woman.
00:15:20.560 She has a sense of adventure.
00:15:22.120 Well, very much a sense of adventure.
00:15:25.040 And she's being escorted by one of her husband's friends who's been put up to escort her about town.
00:15:34.040 Yes.
00:15:34.320 And she's thoroughly bored of him because he's an uptight German.
00:15:38.760 and so she she takes the opportunity uh to show kindness to flashman and also notices he's big
00:15:45.800 and broad and he's got a bit of you know a bit of adventure about him and she likes that and she
00:15:51.140 she likes it even more when uh the policemen do eventually catch up to him and one of them says
00:15:56.220 my god aren't you captain flashman of jihad about fame and so he's literally his status is being
00:16:02.240 pumped up in front of her as well as a singular soldier this daring daring hero yes and she's a
00:16:08.660 bald trollop and she's looking at this thinking right well there's opportunity here so anyway
00:16:13.340 romance ensues go ahead just just one thing that from what i understand of it as well a lot of the
00:16:20.500 inspiration for this story actually just came out of you know george um uh fraser doing his usual
00:16:27.960 just meticulous research of the era and realizing that there was one particular moment in british
00:16:36.420 history in which Otto von Bismarck
00:16:38.700 and Lola Montes were
00:16:40.280 both in London at the same
00:16:42.540 time together. And so a lot
00:16:44.500 of what follows just
00:16:46.340 comes from him seeing that one
00:16:48.440 observation and just going, right, there's
00:16:50.200 definitely a story there to
00:16:52.400 be told. Let's put Flashman
00:16:54.320 straight through the middle of it.
00:16:55.960 Romance ensues with
00:16:57.680 Mrs. James, I should
00:17:00.360 say.
00:17:02.140 He does remark that she is an exceptionally
00:17:04.440 beautiful young woman yes with the slides irish uh yes she's got anglo-irish oh she's she's a
00:17:12.000 bog eater but very very beautiful she is and um but but she is uh as noted she she is she is a
00:17:20.180 spirited lass and it was her inclination to basically hasten him in his lovemaking with
00:17:27.420 the back of a hairbrush now because because she is an exceptionally beautiful young woman
00:17:33.280 he can tolerate this up to a point
00:17:36.080 or of course an English gentleman
00:17:38.160 can only be pushed so far
00:17:39.760 so at some point he takes
00:17:41.900 enough exception to this and he decides to
00:17:43.940 liven her up a bit
00:17:44.860 and she gets all indignant as women
00:17:48.000 are likely to do in this sort of situation
00:17:50.380 and it leads to a slightly
00:17:52.200 unfortunate situation where he's having
00:17:54.200 to make his way out of the
00:17:56.300 residence putting his trousers on
00:17:58.100 as he goes down the stairs while she throws a piss pot
00:18:00.140 at his head. Now
00:18:03.280 we've all been there such is the challenge of being a gentleman about town especially in london
00:18:10.480 um when engaging with the the hot ones are mental well i mean that's the risk we take isn't it it
00:18:17.840 it is it is one of the one of the little details i love about that as well is that because of her
00:18:23.040 her penchant for the for the hairbrush yes flashman remarks on the fact that literally
00:18:28.320 He cannot go throughout the rest of his life without seeing a hairbrush
00:18:32.540 and just being reminded of her.
00:18:35.160 Every time he comes in with an everyday object,
00:18:38.860 he's just like, oh, my God, it was Lola, you know, just over and over again.
00:18:43.480 But the other thing as well is just the fact that
00:18:45.280 because already in the first novel,
00:18:47.900 Flashman has been established as such a womanizer,
00:18:51.280 but also as well as such a man of insatiable lust,
00:18:54.720 He cannot go a week without a woman.
00:18:59.340 And that would be quite a long time for him.
00:19:01.040 And so the fact that there is a woman out there
00:19:03.680 with a higher sex drive, a deeper loss than him,
00:19:07.840 and that he's just going,
00:19:09.300 oh, bloody hell, let me catch my breath.
00:19:11.420 You know, like, bloody hell,
00:19:14.260 it immediately gets across to you
00:19:16.200 just how insatiable this woman is.
00:19:19.100 Yes.
00:19:20.080 It did her well.
00:19:21.740 Remember, audience, she's one of the real characters in this.
00:19:24.400 some of the later ones but she is one of the real characters
00:19:27.200 so anyway so
00:19:28.560 he beats retreat now
00:19:30.560 all things being equal
00:19:33.140 this would simply be
00:19:35.020 just another wench for Flashman
00:19:37.120 and he probably wouldn't have thought
00:19:39.140 much about it
00:19:40.120 as it happens though
00:19:42.420 Mrs James after her divorce
00:19:45.120 then decides well look I need to make my
00:19:47.140 way in life how am I going to do this
00:19:49.280 she's got a sense of advancement so she
00:19:50.860 reinvents herself as Lola Montez
00:19:52.960 and passes herself off.
00:19:55.080 The exotic Spanish dancer.
00:19:55.900 The exotic Spanish dancer.
00:19:56.920 And she passes herself off as this sort of rarefied and very...
00:20:00.200 And, of course, you could do that back in the 1840s
00:20:02.480 because no internet, you can't look people up.
00:20:04.960 She reinvents herself as this sort of legendary dancer
00:20:07.680 and gets herself introduced to the London stage.
00:20:11.640 And Flashman, who at this time was quite bored,
00:20:14.060 I mean, this was a few months later,
00:20:15.220 but Flashman being bored, decides to sabotage her,
00:20:18.540 which, you know, I suppose we don't need to go
00:20:20.840 into too much detail on that,
00:20:22.340 But simply to say, he made an important enemy.
00:20:26.340 Yes.
00:20:27.240 The other enemy he made was that other chap in the carriage
00:20:30.240 who ended up going off in a huff, which was Rotterdam on Bismarck,
00:20:33.520 who did spend a bit of time in London, English-like society,
00:20:38.540 and he got taken out by various people to do a swat of hunting and riding.
00:20:42.120 Yes.
00:20:42.800 They go to the Leicestershire countryside to hang out with all of Flashman's chums.
00:20:48.300 Yes.
00:20:48.620 And there's this remarkable moment where,
00:20:50.640 and it's one of the things that I bookmarked because it's just so funny to watch him.
00:20:55.920 Flashman has been welcomed into the hunting lodge
00:20:58.220 and is expecting just this wonderful, easygoing, plain sailing weekend away with the lads.
00:21:05.440 Bunch of cads.
00:21:06.100 Yes, a bunch of cads.
00:21:07.640 And then it says,
00:21:08.800 The fellows gave a hurrah when I came in and thrust punching cheroots at me
00:21:13.320 while Tom did his duty by the stranger.
00:21:16.560 Barron, says he, the brute has a title, thinks I.
00:21:20.640 Permit me to present Captain Flashman.
00:21:24.000 Flash, this is Baron Otto von, uh, von Schorhausen, ain't it?
00:21:32.500 I can't get my confounded tongue round it.
00:21:35.460 Schornhausen, says Otto, bowing stiffly with his eyes on mine.
00:21:41.080 But that is, in fact, the name of my estate.
00:21:44.020 If you will pardon my correction, my family name is Bismarck.
00:21:48.160 It's an old man's fancy, no doubt, but it seemed to me that he said it in a way that
00:21:53.840 told me that you would hear it again.
00:21:56.540 It meant nothing to me, of course, at the time, but I was sure that it was going to.
00:22:02.200 And again, I felt that prickle of fear of my back, the cold grey eyes, the splendid
00:22:08.400 build and features, the superb arrogance of the man, all combined to awe me.
00:22:16.320 If you're morally as soft as butter as I am, with a good streak of the toad-eater in you,
00:22:22.080 there's no doing anything with people like Bismarck.
00:22:25.400 You can have all the fame that I had then, and the good looks and the inches and the
00:22:30.040 swagger, and I had those too.
00:22:33.400 But you know you're dirt to him.
00:22:35.560 If you have to tangle with him, as the Americans say, you know you'll have to get drunk first.
00:22:41.160 I was sober, so I toad-eat.
00:22:44.540 Honoured to make your acquaintance, Baron, says I, giving him my hand.
00:22:48.080 Trust you're enjoying your visit.
00:22:50.220 They are already acquainted, as I am sure you'll remember, says he, shaking hands.
00:22:56.580 He had a grip like a vice.
00:22:58.540 I guessed you were stronger than I was, and I was damned strong, in body at least.
00:23:03.380 You recollect an evening in London, Mrs. James, first present?
00:23:08.880 By God, says I, all astounded.
00:23:12.120 So I do well.
00:23:14.540 Well, and here you are, eh? Damn, I never expected.
00:23:21.240 Well, Baron, I'm glad to see you. I trust Mrs. James as well.
00:23:28.000 Surely I should ask you, says he with a thin smile.
00:23:32.800 I have not seen the lady since that evening.
00:23:37.340 No? Well, well, I haven't seen a great deal of her myself.
00:23:42.040 I was prepared to be present and let bygones be bygones if he was.
00:23:47.100 He stood, smiling with his mouth, considering me.
00:23:51.300 Do you know, says he at length, I feel sure I have seen you before, but I cannot think there.
00:23:58.860 That is unusual, for I have an excellent memory.
00:24:03.240 No, not in England. Have you ever been in Germany, perhaps?
00:24:07.900 I said I hadn't.
00:24:09.080 Ah, well, it is of no interest, says he coolly, meaning that I was of no interest and turned away from me.
00:24:19.860 I hadn't liked him before, but from that moment I hated Bismarck and decided that if ever the chance came to do him a dirty turn, I wouldn't let it slip away.
00:24:31.700 Spoiler alert, there is an opportunity to do him a dirty turn and it happens just a few days later.
00:24:37.120 Yes. And so Flashman is now in the situation where he has made two enemies of historical consequence.
00:24:46.380 And as you mentioned there, you alighted upon the point that Bismarck thinks he recognises him.
00:24:55.300 He thinks he's seen him before. And it's a very powerful recollection he has, but he can't quite place it.
00:25:04.060 He doesn't know what's going on. It doesn't make any sense.
00:25:07.120 So anyway, Flashman does the Dirty by Bismarck.
00:25:10.060 He's already done the Dirty by Lola Montez.
00:25:13.260 More time passes.
00:25:14.680 And I think we skip a few things.
00:25:16.000 Yeah, they go horse riding, don't they?
00:25:18.420 Oh, yes.
00:25:18.720 And then there's the horse race.
00:25:20.320 And Flashman being a very competent rider, actually.
00:25:23.860 You know, he's letting...
00:25:25.520 They're going through the wilderness and everything,
00:25:27.880 and they're racing.
00:25:28.680 He's hanging back.
00:25:29.620 He's taking his time.
00:25:30.540 He's pacing the horse.
00:25:31.800 He's letting, you know, his opponents scout out the territory
00:25:35.060 where the safe jumbles are.
00:25:35.980 So he's a damn good rider.
00:25:37.120 Right. But then once it's all clear and his path ahead, he gets neck and neck with Bismarck and then ahead of him.
00:25:44.560 And there's a small opening, a clear jump between the thorn bushes.
00:25:51.440 And he basically says, you know, get out of the way. It's my right of way because I'm ahead of you.
00:25:56.500 And Bismarck totally ignores Flashman.
00:25:59.000 Yes.
00:25:59.400 and then makes a jump and Flashman bottles it
00:26:03.180 in front of this man who he despises.
00:26:07.420 And so he's been seen to be the man with less nerve
00:26:10.740 than the mighty Bismarck.
00:26:13.420 I say mighty, but at this point he's no one of any repute.
00:26:17.480 No.
00:26:18.000 And of course, it's even worse because he knows full well
00:26:22.420 that somebody like Bismarck has a hell of a lot more nerve than him.
00:26:26.340 but he's all about appearances when there's nothing on the line.
00:26:30.120 When it's just a steeplechase across country,
00:26:32.520 he wants to look the big man.
00:26:34.500 If there was actual cannon fire going on,
00:26:36.560 he'd be cowering behind something.
00:26:38.560 In society, when it's reputation,
00:26:40.740 he has to maintain his undeserved reputation,
00:26:45.280 and Bismarck sort of robs him from that.
00:26:48.020 So following that, of course, he does the dirty on him
00:26:51.680 by engineering a situation where he gets into a fight
00:26:55.200 and comes off the worst.
00:26:56.820 This was great.
00:26:58.000 This was such a great one
00:26:59.520 because he brings in, doesn't he,
00:27:00.780 John Gulley,
00:27:02.020 this veteran championship boxer.
00:27:05.580 And a gentleman.
00:27:06.540 And a gentleman, absolutely.
00:27:08.460 But the thing is, with all of this,
00:27:10.260 whilst Bismarck has been...
00:27:12.440 Bear in mind that Bismarck is a foreigner
00:27:14.260 and a stranger.
00:27:15.560 It was only being humoured
00:27:17.420 by Flashman's friends
00:27:19.900 because some uncle is a friend.
00:27:24.000 And it's just there.
00:27:24.540 And as a guest, there is a certain etiquette, obviously,
00:27:29.500 in English society, and what Bismarck should be doing
00:27:31.780 is sitting back, being casual, laughing with the gentleman,
00:27:36.040 listening to what they have to say about England,
00:27:38.840 listening to them tell about...
00:27:40.460 But Bismarck, in his usual domineering way,
00:27:44.320 just forces... He chooses the conversation.
00:27:47.740 He chooses what's going to be discussed.
00:27:50.140 He chooses the correct opinion on the matter.
00:27:53.360 He's regularly reminding the room full of Englishmen
00:27:56.400 how Germany is superior.
00:27:57.600 Right, so he just goes on these grand patriotic monologues
00:28:02.320 about Prussian militarism and how mighty Prussia is
00:28:07.020 and why the Schlager competition with these swords
00:28:11.720 is just so much better than your stupid little boxing matches.
00:28:16.800 Yes.
00:28:17.760 Stupid little boxing matches that have no skill in them.
00:28:21.500 It's just two men thrashing at one another.
00:28:24.020 And so Flashman basically says, right, I've had enough of this.
00:28:27.080 He says, we have a veteran boxer here.
00:28:30.260 He's retired now. He's about 60.
00:28:33.260 He says, but maybe he could just show you, Herr Bismarck,
00:28:37.860 that there is actually some skill to boxing.
00:28:41.540 And so eventually, as also as a man of honour,
00:28:45.680 and also because they are all gentlemen as well,
00:28:48.060 it's not like Bismarck can say, oh, no, I'm not fighting this pleb.
00:28:51.500 No, they are all of the same pedigree.
00:28:54.380 And so Bismarck gets himself into this altercation
00:28:57.820 because of his own pride.
00:28:59.920 And as well, Flashman's like,
00:29:01.540 well, obviously I'm not going to step into the ring with him,
00:29:04.720 but I do know this man here who can beat the shit out of him.
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