The Para-Rigger

 

From Dirac's later descriptions of his early life, we might expect him to have been an unhappy child, but there are no signs of this in the extant descriptions of him at the time.  Among the boys Dirac did not get to know at Bishop Road School was Cary Grant, then known as Archie Leach and then living in poverty about half a mile from Monk Road.  In the classrooms and playground of the Bishop Road School, Dirac acquired the distinctively warm Bristol accent, which sounds slightly hickish to other native English speakers, evocative of farmers in the south-west of the country.  Like other young natives of Bristol, Dirac and Grant added an L to the pronunciation of most words that end in the letter A, a practice that is now dying out, though many English people still recognize Bristol as the only city in Britain to be able to turn ideas into ideals, and areas into aerials.  Cary Grant shed this accent when he emigrated to the United States, but Dirac kept it all his life. He spoke with a gentle intonation and unassuming directness that would surprise the many people who expected him to talk like the plummy-voiced English intellectual or popular caricature.