In the new BBC series Les Misérables, Dominic West plays Jean Valjean with a Sheffield accent. He won’t be using dialect, which is a shame. West’s director, Tom Shankland, explained that the easiest way to signal Valjean’s poor peasant roots to a British audience was for his lead actor to go defiantly northern. Shankland ought to know that many poor people live in southern England and many well-off folk live in the north. West is a case in point: his family owned a factory and…

Source: The Times December 13, 2018 00:03 UTC