Flashman on the March - George McDonald Fraser

Flashman on the March - George MacDonald Fraser There are some books you buy on a recommendation, some you buy on a whim and some you buy because they're by a favourite author. And then there are those that when you see them on the shelf or in an advertisement you immediately stop what you're doing and rush to the nearest bookshop to buy a copy. For me, finding out that there was a new Flashman novel coming off the presses was just one of these momentous occasions. The previous book (Flashman and the Tiger) had been a collection of three, shortish, stories and many fans took this as a sign that the well was dry and we'd seen all we were going to see of ...

Imagine yourself adrift in a sinking canoe on the upper reaches of the Blue Nile, being swept towards the brink of the second highest waterfall in Africa. On either bank troops of lancers are hunting you, murderous minions of one of that ill-fated continent's most bloodthirsty tyrants. With you in the canoe is a native warrior-princess with whom you have been conducting a steamy affair, sworn enemy to the tyrant although almost equally bloodthirsty. Desperately, you grab some thorny creepers trailing from an islet in midstream. "I was half-in-half-out of the canoe, and it was slipping slowly away beneath me. Another second and it would have been gone, ...