Posted by Alan Hakim on September 15, 1999 at 09:53:26 from sungold4.nl.ibm.com:
In Reply to: S & A audio version posted by Robert Dilley on September 14, 1999 at 19:08:29:
When I was growing up in various parts of Britain (not so very long after Nancy and Peggy) it seemed to be normal that "educated" people in the South spoke "BBC English", but as you went North, there was much less assimilation of the BBC accent, even among the educated.
So it would be quite natural for the Blackett children to talk in Northern accents. The Walkers and D's would have "educated" accents.
Estuary English, on the other hand, is a recent abomination, and utterly unauthentic for anybody in the books. Recent experience in the audience, for example at plays by Oscar Wilde, shows that some modern actors are unable to keep up a polished accent, and slip into Estuary from time to time.