Page "Harry Paget Flashman" Paragraph 4

In Flashman, Flashman says that the family fortune was made by his great-grandfather, Jack Flashman, in America trading in rum, slaves and " piracy too, I shouldn't wonder.

" Despite their wealth, the Flashmans " were never the thing ": Flashman quotes the diarist Henry Greville's comment that " the coarse streak showed through, generation after generation, like dung beneath a rosebush.

" His father, Henry Buckley Flashman, appears in Black Ajax ( 1997 ).

Buckley, a bold young officer in the British cavalry, was wounded in action at Talavera in 1809.

He then tried to get into " society " by sponsoring bare-knuckle boxer Tom Molineaux ( the first black man to contend for a championship ) and subsequently married Flashman's mother Lady Alicia Paget, a fictional relation of the real Marquess of Anglesey.

Buckley also served as a Member of Parliament but was " sent to the knacker's yard at Reform ".

Beside politics, his interests were drinking, fox hunting ( riding to hounds ) and women.