This paper builds on recent work that highlights the significance of language, accents and voice in defining national identity. It uses British film and radio produced in the Second World War to trace an increasingly inclusive version of ‘the sounds of civilisation’ against German barbarism: one that encompassed a wide range of English-speakers from different class, ethnic and national groups and which also incorporated the sound of non-German Europeans, transforming them from alien foreigners into members of a family. The paper uses evidence about auditory perceptions in different geographical and national contexts — America, Australia and Europe — to explore a range of verdicts on which kinds of speaking voices were more civilised than others.

Wendy Webster has published widely on questions of imperialism, race, ethnicity, gender, migration and national identity, in contemporary British history including Imagining Home: Gender, ‘Race’, and National Identity and Englishness and Empire, 1939-1965 which was awarded the International Association for Media and History prize for best work in the field in 2006. Her latest book, co-edited with Louise Ryan is Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-war Britain. Her current project on Englishness and Europe has been supported by a Leverhulme Fellowship.