American Experts On Radio 4

[hellywelly4]

I often listen to radio 4 discussion programmes during the morning and have noticed recently that when an expert is invited to.participate it's often an American lady/gentleman with a very strong accent. Are there no English experts any more? At the moment it's a discussion about Catherine the Great.  I'm trying not to be racist but not succeeding.

[Roobaba]

Michael Gove, the British cabinet minister who I am embarrassed to confess we educated, famously said after it was pointed out to him by a journalist that all the experts opposed Brexit, he said: 'Oh we've had enough of experts.'

There is an article to read, 'Michael Gove on the Trouble With Experts' on the Chatham House website I think.
 

[Roobaba]

So there's the answer, no more English experts they've been banished from our country.. except now they are on the internet (including AB) and are called 'social media commentators'.

[Peter Pedant]

The Beeb abandoned the London ( RP) accent. and then set about making all accents equal ( they arent)

as part of social engineering

and so they rejoice as someone says ' an we aff to teenk about dees teeng' asking us to think about a rise in the Bank Rate - British Guyanian

and the beeb thinks it is very educational for us, but we change to other channels

[Peter Pedant]

I heard the same prog on Catherine the great - we got up to - she spent a year in bed and emerged with a bent spine ( three sibs had died)

this is TB and Potts disease of the spine

No one seemed to notice.

Then we had the marriage of Catherine to Paul III I think, and they were using 21st century parallels, whereas every historian knows, you should jusdge against the criteria of the time ( 1750)

so I turned off - -  as a result  of content and not accent

 

[Peter Pedant]

this  is not too upmarket is it?

[ I forgot to put in the obligatory " foo ding dang dong" and sceam scream scream I am being stalked]

[Ellipsis]

I suppose it's OK for an American to be talking about a Russian on a British radio programme, especially because at the start of Catherine's reign America was British (and by her death it wasn't).

[jno]

I think hellywelly may just have been talking about the difficulty of understanding foreign accents, rather than the propriety of commissioning non-Brits. I've just had a day in hospital unable to understand almost anybody, partly because of the great variety of strong accents, partly because of the tinnitus snakes constantly hissing in my ears.

[pastafreak]

"racist" ??

[pastafreak]

jno...imagine my great difficulty when I first moved here 🤔

[douglas9401]

In Our Time with Lord Barg seems to have been missed.

A few Americans jolly things along, they tend not to fiddle with their elbow patches while mulling.

Warning: Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while listening.

[hellywelly4]

jno - I have absolutely no difficulty in understanding what is said when it is an American accent. My point is - why is an American person brought in as an expert when there must be numerous experts who are people whose first language is British English. In no way could I be accused of being racist and I do resent that inference.

[jno]

oh okay, I misunderstood your reference to accents. I don't mind any accent at all (no doubt I have one - as do all Brits) as long as I understand what's said.

[jno]

me too, pasta, had to go to pronunciation school to learn about Cholmondely and Featherstonehaugh.

[hellywelly4]

But why have an American on the programme at all? Why not a person born and raised in the UK?  Are there no experts born and raised here? I don't think I'm getting the basis of my question through. That doesn't sound good English, sorry. Perhaps I had better leave it altogether.

[pastafreak]

Hellywelly @ 14:14....I was only questioning the use of the word.

As an American, I certainly do not consider myself a separate race* 🤔🙄

* Even tho Americans may seem to be on a different planet 

[pastafreak]

Maybe the American was first to accept the offer/ invite to be on the program...or they have a book coming out. Who knows?

[douglas9401]

Or an instruction went out to yank someone from academia and it was misunderstood. 😁

[Ellipsis]

The three people in the programme were Greg Jenner, the presenter, David Mitchell, the "celebrity", both British; and this lady, the subject matter expert:

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/history/about-us/staff-key-contacts/julia-leikin/

Dr Julia Leikin - Teaching Fellow in Modern European History
Julia Leikin is a historian of Russia and Modern Europe, with an interest in the development and practice of international law, and legal culture more broadly. Currently, she is working on a monograph that analyses the practice of the law of nations in the Russian Empire’s maritime realms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Looking to the sea and along the Russian Empire’s maritime frontiers, the project recovers the forgotten maritime dimension of imperial Russian history and shows the centrality of the maritime realm to Russian international thought.

Her recent and forthcoming publications set the scene for understanding the “Russian Mediterranean” – an important frontier in the development of Russian international and maritime law. Together with Elena Smilianskaia, she is the editor and translator of Russian Faith, Honour & Courage Displayed in a Faithful Narrative of the Russian Expedition by Sea in the Years 1769 & 1770 by Rear-Admiral John Elphinston, which was published in Russian translation in 2020 and will soon be released in the original English.


She received a Ph.D. from University College London in December 2016. Before coming to Royal Holloway, Leikin was Assistant Professor of History at Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and a British Academic Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter. Leikin has also held fellowships at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), Institute of Historical Research (London), and LMU-Munich Center for Global History. Her research has been supported by the IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowship, the Scouloudi Foundation, German Historical Institute in Moscow, and the Hakluyt Society.

[pastafreak]

Obviously she has impressive credentials, resides here (I assume)...and is almost one of us. She may even consider herself English if she's been here long enough 😉

I hope the OP has seen this.