Marina Hyde

I mean, Flashman is, in Tom Brown's school days, the George McDonnell Fraser Flashman books, Flashman's the bully.

And you know that line that people say, oh, all villains are just victims whose stories haven't yet been told.

Flashman becomes the hero and he has these amazing swashbuckling adventures.

But thinking of ones that haven't been done, I did a top three.

I don't know why I'm now doing it.

You see, you've broken me.

Okay, at number three.

I thought, although she's not that minor, but there's something about her that's brilliant.

In Portrait of a Lady, a Henry James novel, Isabel Archer's friend, Henrietta Stackpole, who's actually sort of amazing because it's whatever it is, it's the late 1800s.

And she is an example of the new woman.

She is a reporter for the New York interviewer.

And she's so sort of modern and she's got great repartee.

I would like to hear more from Henrietta Stackpole, I have to say.

But she's not a tiny part.

So I'm thinking like, okay, these people who have really small parts.

I thought one, someone I've always really been fascinated by in The Great Gatsby is Owl Eyes.

And we see him so little.

Nick Caro meets him in the library at one of Gatsby's parties.

And he's the one who says, look at this whole library.

He went to trouble of getting all these books, but actually they haven't been cut.