Michael Neill

Thomas Nagel quotes Philippa Foot on being asked how to detect a ‘lower-class accent’: ‘My dear, any British accent is lower class’ (LRB, 10 February). There is a striking consonance with the construction of ‘colour’ explored by Musab Younis in his piece in the same issue. To speak in something like BBC English or Received Pronunciation was to be accent-less, just...

Thomas Nagel quotes Philippa Foot on being asked how to detect a ‘lower-class accent’: ‘My dear, any British accent is lower class’ (LRB, 10 February). There is a striking consonance with the construction of ‘colour’ explored by Musab Younis in his piece in the same issue. To speak in something like BBC English or Received Pronunciation was to be accent-less, just...

Katherine Rundell discusses the ancient reputation of hares as witches or fairy-folk (LRB, 2 July). The notion of hares as witches has a particularly tenacious history in Ireland. Medieval commentators such as Caxton recorded the belief that Irish ‘beldams’ could ‘transform themselves into the likenesses of hares, in order to milk their neighbours’ cattle and steal their...

Marina Warner’s beautiful review of Thomas Laqueur’s Work of the Dead had me thinking about the insistent presence of the dead in my own childhood – and, I suppose, the childhoods of all those whom Doris Lessing called the Children of Violence (LRB, 17 August). It wasn’t just the absent presence of my mother’s father and brother, killed in the first and second wars (as...