Posted by Peter Ceresole on June 04, 2014 at 14:46:22 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Arthur's voice posted by Andy on June 04, 2014 at 09:04:40:
I'm not sure if it was the accent I was expecting - but then again for a public school-educated, early 20th-century and well-off English gent, maybe it was!
I'm sure you're right. There are a many recordings of spoken English from AR's period, and they mostly have that accent, or a version of it, in common. For instance the commentaries in '30s newsreels, and dialogue in feature films, are from another world. It's interesting that, say, old American dialogue or commentary doesn't have that difference, but then the class differences there were less pervasive and were quite differently expressed.
AR's accent sounds rather Edwardian to me- pre first world war in origin, which makes sense.
Mind you, living in South East London as I do, my 'standard English' accent is as different from Peckham street patois as AR's Edwardian would be different from a cockney coster-monger's speech.