Letter: That Beryl just don't talk proper
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Your support makes all the difference."I BET Johnson spoke clearly," says Beryl Bainbridge (Diary, 7 March). Wrong! Boswell's Life (for the year 1776) tells an anecdote on this very topic. "Johnson himself never got entirely free of those provincial accents. Garrick sometimes used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, looking around the company, and calling out, `Who's for poonsh?' "
Boswell also remarks on "once pronounced woonse" and there "pronounced fear instead of fair".
Sounds like Brummie to me.
C J HARRIS
Glossop, Derbyshire
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