152 From a letter to Rayner Heppenstall, BBC

[Tolkien's dramatic dialogue, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 3 December 1954. Rayner Heppenstall, the producer, had asked Tolkien what 'dialect' the speakers should adopt.]

22 September 1954

As for the English dialogue no 'dialect' tone or rural quality is required at all. There is not intended to be what we should call a difference of social standing between the two speakers. One requires a younger lighter voice, and the other an older and deeper. The difference between them is rather one of temper, and matter, than 'class'. The young minstrel bursts into formal verse, and so uses an archaic style – as anyone would capable of verse at the time, and as Tidwald himself does when he mocks Torhthelm.

It is not indicated what part of the country either came from. Torhthelm is in fact much more likely to have come from the West Midlands, as did many who fell at Maldon. But in a period when 'dialect' merely marked place and not rank or function, and at any rate details of grammar and vowels had no social implications, it would be best to avoid any modern rusticity. In any case any modern East Anglian characteristics would be anachronistic, since they did not then exist – the fusion of the Danish and English elements that eventually produced them was not yet accomplished. And Essex of the East Saxons was (and is) a very different affair from the Northfolk and Southfolk.