Having thought that Lancashire books would be easy for me to read aloud, I find unexpected traps and pitfalls that regularly have me cutting and pasting corrections into completed audio files. I'll come to the dialect passages another time. For now, I'll mention a few place names. Blackley ("Blakely"), Rawtenstall ("Rottenstall"), Bacup ("Bakeup") and Horwich ("Horritch"), I knew. Euxton ("Exton"), Myerscough ("Mersco"), Burscough ("Bersco"), Samlesbury ("Samsbury"), Haigh ("Hay") and Brathay ("Braythee), I have learned the hard way. And then there are Darwen ("Darren") and Whalley ("Worley") that I have seen mentioned, but don't quite believe. I suppose there's often one way that those who are born and bred in a place say its name and another that outsiders use, and I'm guessing that this may well be the case with Darwen and Whalley.
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This is going to be a website all about Lancashire books - books written by Lancashire people, books written in Lancashire, books written about Lancashire, and most of them out of print. A couple of months ago, I started reading audiobooks for LibriVox and pretty soon realized I'd be best off looking for books I can read in my own voice. There's a fair few on the web and I'll try to link to as many as I can here.
I don't have a Lancashire accent, whatever that may be. I have a Manchester accent, or at least I had one once. It's been slipping away since I left the city 40 years ago. This is a nice way to try and get some of it back. To start with, I've posted a link to my first LibriVox book on the Peterloo Massacre by F.A. Bruton. Right now I am reading a book on Lancashire by the same author and illustrated by Albert Woods. As I can't read his paintings aloud, I've made a slideshow of them here. |
Phil Benson
Born in Manchester when it was still part of Lancashire, which it still is really. Exiled in sunny Sydney, I love to read Lancashire books Archives
March 2013
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