Famous accents from the past

[Creoda]

Compile accents of celebrities that are interesting or don't seem to exist anymore.

John F. Kennedy


Katherine Hepburn


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


Teddy Roosevelt


Ian Paisley


Virginia Woolf


John Curtin


Sir Oswald Mosley

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

There's a YouTube channel called "Life in the 1800s" with various interviews with people who were born in that era. It might also be of interest to you. That is if you can discern whether an accent has ceased to exist or not. As English is not my native language, it is more difficult for me to perceive the nuances and differences between various similar accents.

[Graham]

Arthur Conan Doyle's accent sounds Morningside Edinburgh and English mixed. Bit like some of the unionist politicians today.

[Creoda]

Aldous Huxley


Ayn Rand


John Logie Baird


Jimmy Stewart

[Creoda]

Sylvia Plath


William Luther Pierce


Telly Savalas

[Daco Celtic]

Some obvious American examples. John Facenda has the most peculiar one being an Italian-American from Philadelphia who was never formally schooled in the Trans-Atlantic accent.

Gore Vidal


George Plimpton


William F. Buckley (could almost include Johnny Carson as an old midwestern accent)


Orson Welles


John Facenda

[Creoda]

Shelby Foote


Bill Bryson


Barry Humphries

[Creoda]

Some of the oldest voice recordings in existence, of two famous Victorians:

Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan (6:21), with an introduction from George Gouraud, an American Civil War veteran from NY, in 1888


Florence Nightingale, 1890

[Creoda]

Famous Australians & New Zealanders from the past

Sir Edmund Hillary

To my ears New Zealanders used to sound a lot more like their Australian contemporaries, the accents have diverged considerably in recent decades

Charles Kingsford Smith


Nancy Bird Walton


Weary Dunlop


Percy Grainger


Chips Rafferty


Jean Batten (NZ)


Nellie Melba


Ernest Rutherford (NZ)

[Creoda]

John McCormack, the most famous pre-war Irish singer