Hilary Mantel was interviewed on RTE Radio 1 last week about the second book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. I was surprised to hear a distinctly Irish cadence or lilt in her voice. This seemed to grow as the conversation progressed, so much so that, when I came back into the room after a brief absence, I thought (wrongly) that the programme had moved on to a different interviewee.
Mantel does indeed come of Irish stock, though both her parents were born in England. She was born, like me, in north Derbyshire & it is more than likely that school &, possibly, 1950s elocution lessons) taught her to speak proper. She attended university in London & has lived abroad in various countries, so will have experienced the urge to adapt to cadences she heard around her, rather than, as some do, sticking stubbornly to the accents of her childhood out of a kind of loyalty or badge of identity.
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