BBC Radio 4

"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." George Bernard Shaw

Melvyn Bragg explores the re-emergence of accents, the influence of newcomer accents across the UK - and how our perception of them has changed.

Melvyn delves into the British obsession with accents - forget learning how to speak a foreign language, it's the one spoken here that preoccupies us. Whether we are understood relies as much on how we say something as on what we're saying. And, as Melvyn reveals, our perception of accents, which changes from one generation to the next, tells a fascinating story about our identity in Britain.