It was PG Wodehouse who likened his first reading of Flashman to Keats’ experience of reading Homer in Chapman’s translation, although I can safely say that Flashy is unlikely to ever hold his silence, even on a peak in Darien – he’d be looking for a likely woman or an escape route. The whole point of Flashman is that, despite his being a cad, a bounder, a coward and a cheat, yet, in the madness of the Crimean War, his cowardice takes on a certain honesty. Indeed, given the fact that Flashman contrives to take part in the charges of both the Heavy and the Light brigades – the latter with his bowels erupting in a fanfare of farts – there is a case for calling him the bravest man there: one who knows fear and yet still carries on. Thankfully, just when it seems like Flashy might be turning into a proper hero, he does something truly appalling and the reader breaths a huge sigh of relief.