The variety of English described in this work is informal educated spoken Southern British. The work is based on a study of recorded texts together with an examination of my own usage as a native speaker. In articulatory features the speakers represented in the recorded texts varied within narrow limits, from "received pronunciation" in the strict sense, with no observable regional characteristics, to a form recognizably southern but still clearly acceptable as "standard British": roughly the range specified in the principal works of Daniel Jones and used as the basis for the teaching of English as a foreign language in areas where British English is taken as the model. There was no observable difference in the systematic use of intonation patterns by the various speakers.