Three essential ingredients go to make up a Flashman plot. These are: a ravenous and fascinating heroine, a spine-chillingly sadistic villain and a historically based exotic or legendary figure... This mixture, enriched with lechery and treachery, makes a galloping read and culminates in the fourth great Fraser quality: a full-dress pitched battle. In this case two battles: the great engagements at Ferozeshah and Sobraon by which Britain became master of the Punjab. How Flashman or Fraser find time for the libido and its exercise among all this is more than I can fathom, but Victorian values have been overdue for revision and satire these many years.