Beryl Bainbridge

[housesparrow]

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/02/beryl-bainbridge-dies

It was always a suprise to realise that she was still alive - she always looked a bit poorly, but maybe (like me) she just photographed badly.

Anyway, she is gone... and a time for those who loved her work to share their favourites.

[Weyland]

Jul 2, 2010 17:51:09 GMT housesparrow said:

Anyway, she is gone... and a time for those who loved her work to share their favourites.

I'm sad she's gone, but I have no BB favourites.

Always planned to read something of hers, but that was knocked on the head by a R4 interview I heard a few years ago.

With an almost Thatcher-like synthetic diction, and similar opinions of her fellow man, she sounded like an ignorant prat well up her own arse. Put me right off.

RIP.

[everso]

I've never read any of her books.

[jean]

I have read a number of them, and enjoyed them.

But I have never been very impressed with her in interviews, and her attacks on my (and her) native accent and her recommendation that we all have elocution lessons leave me - well - speechless.

[housesparrow]

I didn't know about that side of her until she died . "Last Word" tells me all kinds of interesting things about people, some of whom I'd never heard of before then.

Hasn't the Liverpool twang subsided now the pollution is under control and people don't have inflamed nasal passages?

[aubrey]

I have really enjoyed the books of hers that I've read.

I was quite sad to hear the news of her dying.

She lost her accent through acting, didn't she?

[Weyland]

Jul 3, 2010 9:20:36 GMT aubrey said:

IShe lost her accent through acting, didn't she?

I guess so. But she wasn't a very good actor, so it ended up sounding phoney. At least to my ear. And the rubbish she spouted about accents, mostly Scouse, was positively emetic. To my ear.

Maybe she could write good stuff, but I won't be reading any of it.

[Weyland]

Jul 3, 2010 6:54:18 GMT housesparrow said:

Hasn't the Liverpool twang subsided now the pollution is under control and people don't have inflamed nasal passages?

By that logic Geordie should sound something like Scouse in the nasal department. It doesn't and it never did.

[Though I did once hear Loyd Grossman identifying Pauline Collins's accent as Geordie, and he is a world authority on accents. And -- like Janet Street Porter's -- his is totally unique to him. Must have taken a lot of work.]