SIR,—As a person of mixed parentage, edu- cated almost wholly
in England and now resident in Scotland, I should like to comment on recent passages in the Spectator.
If Miss Robertson were to complete her experiment, I am prepared to bet that she would find an equal number — at least — of simple-minded listeners south of Berwick.
Certainly I have found that the Englishman's inability to perceive Scottish regional differ- ences is only excelled by the Scot's inability to perceive those of England, and that the Scotsman's mistaken ideas of the South and its inhabitants are only less odd than those of the Englishman about the North.
In the South I have fled from Scots, on account of a certain aggressive (and sometimes assumed) Scotchness which I need not describe. Of recent years I have come to notice some- thing very similar in reverse. The voices of the English are flatter, their behaviour fre- quently perky and 'cleversticks' in a way I never observed in the English at home. Could it be that both are the result of unsuccessfUl attempts, perhaps unconscious, to show off before the natives? I wish we could stop!— Yours faithfully,
DENATIONALISED
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