Pity Zadie Smith. The author has just recorded the audio version of her new novel The Fraud and quickly realised she had made her main character Scottish. “I can’t do a Scottish accent so Penguin had to hire a voice coach for me to do the Edinburgh accent,” she said at the Southbank Centre this week. “I also had a mouth brace in so it’s a bad Scottish accent and a lisp, so enjoy nine hours of that.”
On a more serious note, Smith sniffed at what she sees as historical moralising, particularly about British history. “I get the impression people are scared to know the truth of British history but it’s so fascinating. And to be honest, it’s not about you, it’s about them. What you will find when you go back is not only acts of terrible destruction and exploitation but also intense reforming energy. Incredible movements. I just don’t relate to the idea of being ashamed or proud of history,” she said, adding, “I don’t consider history a personal matter. I consider it a matter of the facts. To be a functioning society, you need to know the facts of where you’ve come from. Writing this book did not make me hate England. It was really fascinating how this country struggled towards some sort of democratic idea. How long it took, how brutal it was and how many people were involved.”
