Harry Flashman, damn yer eyes! Quiz

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".

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.

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."

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".

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".

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".

Answer: A German sailor

Coming across the stricken Flashy cowering in a gutter, Holmes describes him to Watson as "a drunken ship's dogsbody from a second-rate German university".

Answer: Mrs. Madison

While Flashy strains to hear the musings of his bosses above him, the "reckless bitch" attempts to re-initiate affairs of love under the billiard slate. As Flashy says "...what could I do, except hold my breath and comply as quietly as possible - it's an eerie business, I can tell you."

Answer: Sleep

Awoken by the approaching guardsmen, Harry manages to bundle Elspeth to safety perhaps because, for once, she did not stop to "ask me who these strange gentlemen were, or what they wanted, or if her hair was disarranged".

Answer: Watney

After coming from his first audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, Flashy learns Elspeth has been "riding in the Park" with Watney. Despite his immediate anger, a pragmatic Flashy ultimately allows "what the devil, you have to make do as best you can; if the tide's there, swim with it....you only go by once".

Answer: Club Hauling

Flashy excuses his feeble and wholly incorrect answer to the roguish Lincoln by claiming that the term was "difficult to explain to a landsman, don't ye know?"....and involved "quite complicated manoeuvres, you see...".

Answer: Fanny Duberly

Flashy finds "little Fanny Duberly, presiding over a frying-pan..." as he approaches the lines of Campbell's Scottish Regiment. As our gallant hero notes, "I longed to give her tits a squeeze, but couldn't, with all those leering Highlanders nudging each other."

Answer: Kit Carson

Harry might have admired Carson for his "greatness", but on a personal level "didn't care for him all that much....he knew a rogue when he saw one - and we rogues know when we've been seen".

Answer: True

Flashman continues, of a man he obviously held in high regard, "worshipped by the rank and file...even charming, if you don't mind ten-minute silences....as a hand-to-hand blood-spiller, it was Eclipse first and the rest nowhere".

Answer: Five wickets for twelve in eleven overs

A very tough one to finish off with; Harry offers the sporting commentary that, "if our present Test match fellows (had)....Mrs Leo Lade to look after 'em, then we'd have the Australians begging for mercy".