[NOTE: See a reader’s correction below. Hitchens did not have a “British” accent. There is no such thing.]

IN AN entry at VFR, a reader quotes this anonymous online comment about Christopher Hitchens and the tendency of Americans to fall head over heels for glib British intellectuals:

He and Arianna H[uffington] were/are masters of that Oxbridge debating team thing that Americans lap up, remarkably fluid and fluent in their ability to think on their feet or seat. One need only think of the average presidential candidate’s stumbling utterances expressing ugly ideological claptrap to understand why these British-trained contrarians and freethinkers have been embraced as civilized truth tellers. But the downside of such verbal pyrotechnics is glibness and inchoate thinking. Pontificating that fast one doesn’t really know where one’s going and is then obliged to defend one’s half-baked conclusions with ferocious wit as if they were actually well-considered. Hitchens always reminded me of a rich, Public School bully, like the young Steerforth of David Copperfield (before his comeuppance), or, especially, Flashman, the ghastly cad you-love-to hate of Tom Brown’s Schooldays and GM Fraser’s further adventures of the boastful, beastly braggart. I’ll miss him making sport but the world has not lost a great intellectual and humanitarian. 

                                                                      — Comments —

Bruce writes:

Hitch did not have a British accent, he had an English accent!

There is no such thing as a British (i.e. English, Scottish, Welsh AND Northern Irish) accent – the phrase ‘British Accent is an error propagated by the U.S. media.

‘Britain’ is precisely not England, just as – on a larger scale – the United States is not the whole American continent.

Of course, strictly, there is no ‘English’ accent either – in that it is very varied; however there is a ‘Standard English’ or Received Pronunciation’ used in public discourse – and this accent is what Christopher Hitchins DID have.

Laura writes:

Of course. Thank you for the correction.

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