George Macdonald Fraser Trivia

1. In "Flashman at the Charge", Flashy is given a rather interesting steam-bath massage by a relative of Count Pencherjevsky....who is this woman with her "fine horse face"?

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Aunt Sara

"A sovereign remedy against our long winters", Sara claims as she entices Flashy into a hot steam tryst; after a passionate bout with the "saucy little flirt", which includes a birch whipping, Flashy declares her to be "undoubtedly my favourite aunt".

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: Rugby

From Quiz Flashman Papers: Trivia for Cads

Answer: Pipers Fort

Harry was hailed by the British public as the Hector of Afghanistan. In truth, he shirked to the best of his ability to save his own skin, but was found unconscious with the Union Jack flag wrapped around his body.

From Quiz Flashman's Fillies

Answer: He has to fight a duel

Flashman makes oblique references to his conquest to Josette's lover, Bernier. They quarrel, and Bernier challenges Flashman to a duel. Flashman arranges the duel so that neither party is harmed but he comes up smelling of roses. As a result of the scandal, he is sent to Scotland to assist in quelling civil unrest, until the scandal blows over.

From Quiz 'The Sheikh and the Dustbin'

Answer: Dand has to darn Chick's socks for him

Fletcher, the platoon dandy, was the one who wore Dand's kit, Daft Bob Brown took naps and Riach was a Wee Free. All the men (apart from Chick) had to know how to darn in those days - if you couldn't darn, you got holes in your sock and then blisters and you couldn't march. Some eccentrics dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow (wax) but Dand wouldn't have that 'within fifty yards of his perfumed bower', and I don't blame him!

From Quiz 'The General Danced at Dawn' - G. MacDonald Fraser

Answer: The loss of McNeill's pants/trousers

Initiative, leadership, ingenuity, intelligence and cheerfulness are what they should have shown - throughout the board, after a series of mishaps, what they did show was 'lacking in initiative, deficient in moral fibre, prone to recrimination, and generally un-officer-like'. Guts is what the C.O. and the rest of the examiners thought they had shown on the assault course when they tried valiantly (but failed) to finish the course. It wasn't until they were alone that McNeill explained the reason he would not budge out of the last ditch and over the last obstacle (though doing as much as possible to look as if he was trying) was that his trousers had come off while wading through the ditch and Dand 'was not going to appear soaked and in his shirt-tail before all the board and candidates, not for anything'. So although they probably got through for showing 'grit, determination and endurance', what really got them through was the loss of his pants!

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Jallalabad

After Harry escapes the defeat at Gandamack, he breaks through enemy lines with Sergeant Hudson and holes up in the small fort with a handful of well-beaten sepoys. Despite spending the majority of his time whining and being "plain white-livered", Flashy emerges as the hero of the moment and so begins his epic career.

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: Royal Flash

From Quiz Flashman Papers: Trivia for Cads

Answer: James Brooke

James Brooke was granted the title of Rajah by the Sultan of Brunei. John Brooke was named as Rajah of Mudah by James Brooke in 1859 but was dis-inherited for "treason". Gladstone and Temple (Lord Palmerston) were former British Prime Ministers.

From Quiz Flashman's Fillies

Answer: Blonde, talkative and dim-witted

Whilst in Scotland, Flashman is quartered in the Morrison household. There are four Morrison daughters, with Elspeth being the beauty. Flashman and Elspeth have a sexual liaison, after which Elspeth comments "Was that what the minister means when he talks of fornication?". When Flashman replies in the affirmative, she muses "Mmm, why has he got such a down on it?". It's at this point that Flashman starts to question her intellectual capabilities. Elspeth innocently mentions her encounter to one of her sisters, who tells their parents. Elspeth's uncle gives Flashman the option of another duel, or marriage to Elspeth. Flashman chooses the latter, on the basis that he could do worse than a beautiful blonde with a rich father.

From Quiz 'The Sheikh and the Dustbin'

Answer: No' a' there

"No' a' there" (not all there) was Private McAuslan's opinion of the debonair Captain Errol. The Senior Major thought him "an insufferable young pup", the Padre considered him a "very interesting chentleman" (gentleman) and the second-in-command felt he was "too dam' sure of himself by half". Captain Errol had been commissioned in the Territorials in 1939, he had escaped from the regiment's capture in St. Valery and earned a Military Cross with the Chindits in the Far East. However, he was then broken to Private after threatening to shoot a jobsworth. He then fought in the Balkans and, after winning the Military Medal and various Balkan medals with the partisans and being kissed by Tito, was recommissioned and, doing undercover work in Palestine, became Dand's unit's Intelligence man. The last Dand saw of Errol was in a wire picture taken many years after the war - as a mercenary in the Congo. As the narrator says - there is 'no place for people like Errol in a normal peacetime world; they just don't belong. Their time lay between the years 1939 and 1945 - and even then they sometimes didn't fit too comfortably. But I wonder if we'd have won the war without them'.

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Wisconsin

A "deadly serious" Broadfoot whispers the password to Flashy before our hero is sent to Lahore Fort, informing him that it is the name of a river in America. A cynical Flashy can only glumly suppose that...."it might of been the name of a privy in Penzance for all the good it seemed likely to be."

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: Scud East

From Quiz Flashman Papers: Trivia for Cads

Answer: Elspeth

His own philandering notwithstanding, Flashman often repeats his devotion for Elspeth, despite his nagging suspicions that she has had dalliances of her own.

From Quiz Flashman's Fillies

Answer: She teaches him Hindi

The snobbish Lord Cardigan says he cannot allow Flashman to stay in the regiment after his marriage to a merchant's daughter. Flashman joins another regiment and is sent to India. He has a talent for learning languages and reckons that the best way to do so is in bed with a native woman. "I'd have got more of the classics from an hour's wrestling with a Greek wench than I did in four years from Arnold". The unfortunate Fetnab is sold on once Flashman travels to Afghanistan.

From Quiz 'The Sheikh and the Dustbin'

Answer: A stand-up fight over the fate of some ancient martyr called the Blessed John Ogilvie, in which Private Forbes butted a Catholic comrade under the chin

This is why they're not allowed to discuss religion and sport in education periods. Religion and sport are inextricably bound up in the Glasgow mind, hence the fight - though as Dand says, he 'wouldn't have thought either of them cared that much, but there you are.' I would go as far as to say you shouldn't should never discuss three things in public - religion, sport and the right way to pronounce 'scone' - and it's the last of these that I saw lead to fisticuffs and a thrown table.

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Parkin of Oxford Street

After bribing an acquaintance to fill Bernier's pistol with a blank wad, Flashman ignores the temptation to "shoot the swine down where he stood", and instead aims his pistol away to one side before firing. He accidentally shoots the top of the Surgeon's spirit bottle, and so gains unearned accolades for his marksmanship and "mercy".

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: Slave trader

We can only guess how Fraser thought up this man's name, but in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays', Tom's nursemaid is called Charity Lamb.

From Quiz Flashman Papers: Trivia for Cads

Answer: Houghmagandy

Houghmagandy - Flashman's wife hails from Scotland, the daughter of a Victorian Industrialist, so it's clear that the word hails from Scotland and some definitions indicate a cheery or jolly disposition, while some give more salacious descriptions. I just like the sound of the word.

From Quiz Flashman's Fillies

Answer: She comes close to torturing him and relieving him of some cherished bodily parts

Narreeman is presented to Flashman by a local chieftain. Once in the bedroom, she is unwilling and Flashman commits rape, for the first and only time in his life. Some time after this incident, Flashman is held prisoner by Narreeman's husband, who is intent on allowing Narreeman to exact her revenge on Flashman. Fortunately, Flashman manages to escape before she can set to work.

From Quiz 'The Sheikh and the Dustbin'

Answer: Biting a rifle in two

Don't forget it was an army compass and supposed to be squaddie (soldier) proof! Ripping a telephone book in half is a well-known strongman feat and where I come from the other two expressions are added to 'couldn't' to denote weaklings. For those wondering about 'The Constipation of O'Brien' as a title, this was McAuslan's interpretation of the famous star group containing Betelgeuse.

From Quiz "McAuslan in the Rough" - George MacDonald Fraser

Answer: How to dissect an adverbial clause

As Dand explains, his knowledge was all useless - other children knew such things as how to dissect an adverbial clause and 'the subjective of moneo'. This story was probably what made me a quizzer - the knowledge that I wasn't the only person with a head full of trivia. Apparently Casanova, Charlemagne and Hans Andersen were all born on 2 April.

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Harvard

Upon their parting, an unusually emotional Flashman asks Grouard to travel home with him to England. Frank refuses and a more sedate Flashy later admits relief, because of course "Elspeth would have asked the most awkward questions".

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: The Indian Mutiny

Flashman's involvement in the Zulu Wars is covered in the story 'Flashman and the Tiger'.

From Quiz Flashman Papers: Trivia for Cads

Answer: A book by a famous Victorian author

You can understand Flashy's concern, as Flashman uses the derogatory term "trollop" to describe ladies of easy virtue throughout the Flashman papers! Lord Elgin was referring to Anthony Trollope's novel, "Dr Thorne". Elgin was said to have read this and Darwin's "Origin of the Species" for relaxation during the Peking expedition.

From Quiz Flashman's Fillies

Answer: She has previously allowed him to squeeze her bosom

Betty Parker is married to a man some years older than herself. Whilst still in Kabul she flirts with Flashman, and he gives her bosom a squeeze whilst they are briefly alone. She does not protest, so Flashman takes this as a sign of interest. Flashman instigates an opportunity to visit Betty's tent at night while her husband is absent. Though she welcomes him into her tent, she is less than welcoming when Flashman dives under the covers with her. He apologises, but says he feels misled that she had previously allowed him to squeeze her bosom. Betty says that Flashman is a brute, and that "All gentlemen do that, as a sign of affection". She believes it is the same as shaking hands!

From Quiz 'The Sheikh and the Dustbin'

Answer: They were all military prisons

The glazed roof of Aldershot is reputed to have inspired the name for military prisons - glasshouse. At Heliopolis, prisoners were made to run up and down an infamous hill and at Trimulghari, wells had to be filled and emptied again and again and again. The dustbin at Sowerby Bridge, an ordinary household bin had been polished so highly you could have shaved in it, which convinced the young Dand that come what may, he'd be a good little soldier!

From Quiz "McAuslan in the Rough" - George MacDonald Fraser

Answer: A - Arlington

Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and Laurieston. Dand was very upset not to get Arlingon, as it was apparently 'the name of a private baths in the West End of Glasgow - if you can't remember that sort of thing, what can you remember?'. A sentence in this story makes me smile. Published in 1974, it says 'There are no such general knowledge quizzes nowadays'. This was before 'Trivial Pursuit', pub quizzes and even funtrivia.com.

From Quiz Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes!

Answer: Balliol College

According to Captain John Charity Spring ("the mad Oxford Don") the vessel was so named because he "hate(s) the bloody place".

From Quiz George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Novels

Answer: A precious stone

'Mountain of Light' is the English translation of Koh - i - Noor.

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