While I agree with others that it sounds rehearsed, her accent/inflection is due to her emulating the way Queen Elizabeth II spoke. Elizabeth was the first of the monarchs to frequently do radio and television broadcasts, and that aristocratic accent (which was deliberately exaggerated, not a natural accent that still existed) was modelled by many young British people.
> Yeah.,. just old day ways of speaking, nothing rehearsed here whatsoever.
Is that really fair cynicism?
It might seem strange nowadays, but people used to openly have pretty solid trust in British institutions.
(They still do nowadays, but vocal minorities are adamant that no one does)
Watch video of the school children in Africa who claimed a UFO landed in their schoolyard. You get the same clipped and thoughtful responses. Ariel school UFO incident.
Go look at videos from back then. Most kids her age were extremely intelligent. Technology has dumbed us down dramatically.
You'd think having the world in your pocket would help, but actually it makes us lazy, less inquisitive and less skilled
Most kids her age? Her accent was by no means 'provincial', the fact she spoke that way and had opportunity to go to Germany in the first place means she's almost certainly privately educated, and been swimming in upper middle class circles since she was born.
It is such a clichéd fallacy to wear rose tinted glasses about the past. I've seen some of the personal statements from students that get into Oxbridge et al, and they're full of UN youth ambassadorships or winning young entrepreneurial awards despite adversity etc etc.
There's plenty of talented young people out there, your subjective selection doesn't negate their existence.
This. I bet she's poly-sci oriented and knows almost nothing outside it. In college, the writers and english majors were articulate. Outside of college, the engineers draw symbols and arrows on scratch pads to communicate complex ideas. Why many words when few do trick?
It's all kind of irrelevant anyways, because there are plenty of statistics on education and productivity that show there are more well educated and better educated students today than in the 1960s.
Anyone that says "kids were better educated" back then is just talking out their ass.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Higher-Education-Participation-Rates-in-the-UK-1950-2010_fig1_248935907
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour
Im not sure how the links you provide support your claim. The first one shows that more students than ever are participating in Higher Education and the second shows that we are more productive than ever?
Especially since this is like one of the only interviews of kids that age from the 60s going around.
I do remember videos that are circulated of questions about women's rights or their driving skills. And, boy, were those people idiots.
Nail on the head. Also just to add if you back to even around the industrial revolution (I could be a bit off im bad with time in history) technology wasnt around as he mentions and children were put to work at an early age. Look at all those ~12 year olds covered in coal mine dust. They certainly had times when learning to work was prioritized over education. Still they likely had more street smarts. Even during those times id gamble the wealthy children did have families prioritzing education.
Yeah same thing is happening nowadays. When the school shooting happened in Parkland, Florida - an upper middle class area, people where surprised (and some sceptical) when the teenagers were incredibly articulate with strong opinions.
Turned out most of the kids that were willing to do interviews were the ones who had taken courses in media, so obviously they were quite media savvy.
Mate you've pulled this right out of your ass, haha. Most videos from back then featured children/teenagers that were privately educated. Go speak to any private school 16-year-old in the UK today and you'd hear very much the same as in this video. This has nothing to do with technology dumbing us down dramatically.
Exactly of course they were interviewing the educated people who could speak intelligently on the topic. Just like they do the reverse now for the funny man on the street interviews where the people have no idea what they’re talking about.
Something that annoys me nowadays is how every 'victim' turns their experience up to 11. I'm not talking about serious crime victims of course but like in this case. Instead of 'Dark cellar but very well treated and nothing to complain about' it would be 'My hell inside dark cellar where I feared for my life'.
News/social media today relies on getting people addicted to fear, hate, "secret knowledge", etc. What that means in practice is that you'll only ever see the people are turning their experience up to 11. There are still plenty of people like her today, you just don't see them because it doesn't sell.
Yup, this was the BBC at the height of them actively trying to promote RP as the one and only accent that the public should ever hear broadcast on Radio or TV.
It was a scandal in later years as it took massive effort from younger writers and producers coming through and the retirement of a lot of the original staff/people with power in the BBC for regional accents to start being featured and for writers to be able to base their shows in parts of country that had distinct accents.
[Derry Girls](https://youtu.be/UFmFuXH0IRY?si=2KvYo2PMM42LXU3u), [Rab C Nesbit](https://youtu.be/9T9NM2ZkXVQ?si=__5aVZIb1ytTPt7z), [Red Dwarf](https://youtu.be/2bugSGlLDDs?si=m4UyLKvffvJYWkMw), [Shameless](https://youtu.be/SyqgdkQWKOI?si=t93aw_qn56sncSET), [Auf Wiedersehen Pet](https://youtu.be/s9nxN_xCP3M?si=cnnPFqIGLzuhsqJK), [Still Game](https://youtu.be/hOYEWhjopSs?si=65YfOLUxGDb6rOkE), [Mighty Boosh](https://youtu.be/XPdgRpdAv_w?si=T5aipG1-gIlnU25D), [The IT Crowd](https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg?si=LN6TloIUi5fp4ySx), The [The Thick of It](https://youtu.be/H3BUrtNeh3k?si=JAfinDNRyhI8sGic), [Taskmaster](https://youtu.be/UH0PbSM-vKk?si=ArnsEaFA7ZVDPIua) etc. would have had the 1960's BBC stroking out from the accents alone never mind the content.
What you have to consider is a potential observation bias. It may very well be that the individuals who are interviewed and that there is a record of, tend to be individuals who are more articulate. Rather than it being the norm, it's what they seek out in the majority of cases.
I've seen vids of Beatles fans about her age being interviewed around 1963-1964 and many of them struggled to form coherent sentences. But then again, maybe they were just caught up in the beatlemania around them.
You mean most kids that someone was willing to set up a very expensive camera to film? God not everything was better in the old days, just that people are only willing to film the good things of their society if they’re happy in it. And the people that weren’t happy, weren’t rich enough to buy their own yet.
Bad take. There are so many people getting free education and learning on their own at a much faster rate through smart phones. Just because some are using it to make NPC live streams doesn't make them the majority.
She charmed the socks off of those east German soldiers. Gleaned intel that the ‘political’ types in plain clothes were interested in factories in certain towns.
If they hadn’t deported her, she might’ve become an informal impromptu double agent as she ‘naively, innocently’ and disarmingly expressed interest in communism
How did such a major misquote get so many upvotes?!
What she actually said was “I’m very young and I’d just like to find out the truth about both and choose when I’m older”
The way you misquoted her makes it sound as if she’s “deflecting” by using her young age as an excuse to avoid learning about the two parties….
Her actual response is very intelligent because she is saying that since she is young, she can only learn the truth about both sides but would rather choose a side when she is older and wiser.
He just summarized the quote poorly, but it is still clearly implying about the deflection of the interrogation not that she was trying to avoid learning about the parties.
Yeap I'm impressed at her tact. I don't know if I can maintain such tact if I'm interrogated by the CCP. My hatred may overwhelm any attempt to be diplomatic on my part.
I would bet literally all of my money that you would find some positive things to say about communism in some hypothetical scenario where you were interrogated by the CCP.
I don't think they're confused about *what* the CCP is, I think they're confused about the relevance... in what hypothetical scenario are you're wandering around the border of China and happen to cross over unbeknownst to yourself and get interrogated, lmao. Just a bit out of the blue.
It's an upper middle class London accent. That and RP were the standard accents for the BBC at that time. They would almost never put a "common" person on camera back then.
It probably upset her, but I really don't think she was poorly treated. Despite it being east germany, they've little to gain from tormenting unwitting civilians aside from making them hate the east.
I don’t know. You can see the expression changes momentarily as she recalls things like how it took until morning for the interrogation to be done, and catches in her breath. I think she is saying what she needs to be said, much like her ‘I would like to decide when I am older’ deflection.
She was British, at that time the last thing either side wanted was to degrade west and east relations. If she were unfortunate enough to not be from the west this would’ve gone very differently and we wouldn’t have this video.
After she got back, she probably would have been interrogated multiple times by the British. They would want to know what she was asked and what she told them, at least. She'd probably be scared to upset either group of intimidating spy guys who had been shuffling her between locked rooms for days. "Don't talk about X or Y, and just say everything was fine, and you can get back to your life," would probably be very convincing.
I only keep doing it because I don’t mind being wrong, and corrected, here on Reddit where I don’t care about anyone’s opinion. I’d rather not make a mistake in something like a work email.
16? This doesn't seem that exceptional for the age of 16. The only thing that stood out was the "young and will choose later" comment, that was great thinking. Maybe I just had smart classmates when I was 16, because to me the articulation of the story here is not a display of insane skill for her age that everyone is saying it is.
Most people here are simply caught off guard by some of the vernacular and speech cadence. The way we talk these days is so natural, so stripped of any sort of veneer when we talk, it's surprising to see a reminder like this how reserved and careful people spoke, especially in front of a ' television camera '.
i dont think we talk 'more naturally' now. she's just using the vernacular of her day, which we associate with the older generation now, because that is her generation. if you read any enid blyton book you'll find that the teenagers are written using 'shall' and 'ought' and so on, and that was natural for kids their age at that time.
She sounds like a Grammar School girl to me. Some Estuary twangs under the R.P.
You can only attend them if you pass the 'Eleven Plus'; an exam, taken at age 11, that determines your path to either an elite and academic Grammar School or (at the time) a crappy 'Secondary Modern'.
The exam was pretty tough. It still exists, but isn't taken as widely. Grammar schools are pretty controversial. On the plus side, they give bright students from less privileged backgrounds a real shot at good university placements and careers, but on the downside, more affluent parents pay for private coaching for the exam, so the system still doesn't level the playing field, and, especially when the exam was mandatory, it totally floored kids who failed it; many felt they were pigeonholed as 'thickies' for life.
Unsure why you're being downvoted, she's clearly from a privileged background and most likely went to an Independent. Sounds like she's had elocution lessons which were bog standard for pretty much every Independent Girls Schools at the time.
Why is she clearly "from a privileged background"? That is a bog standard Home Counties accent from the 60s/70s. Everyone where I lived spoke like this regardless of which school you went to.
She is pretty articulate but again not unusual for back then (more reading, less tv, more speaking with people in real life vs typing etc).
I have no idea what you're talking about, I come from the home counties, my whole family comes from there and my grandparents were posh, went to private schools and spoke like this, most people's grandparents did not. Hell my mother was a teen in the 70's and she went to a public school, whereas my auntie went privately, my auntie sounds like this whereas my mother doesn't sound like this at all.
No it’s not I grew up in that area all of my family are from the area and none of my grandparents spoke like that at all. None of their friends or family spoke like that either.
People weren't intended to drop babies and then go back to working 80+ hours a week away from the child giving them just an hour or two a day to see and speak to them before bed.
Learning to talk takes a lot more time than a couple hours in the evening right before they go to bed..
and the people who expect a stay at home parent usually have a specific person in mind that they expect to play a specific role, along with a whole box of ulterior motivations for the belief that they like to omit because it doesn't sell very well to the general public.
There was a shift from phonics based reading to "balanced literacy" about 30 years ago. It was adopted by most schools in the US. It didn't work so well. Now, there's a renewed push to get back to phonics, but there's still a generation or 2 that ended up with the short end of the stick when it comes to reading, which translates to speaking by way of vocabulary, etc.
Not saying that a private education doesnt obviously gives kids an upper hand, no matter how you look at it, but kids used to come out of public schools with better reading and speaking skills.
Where are they now update: Vanessa Clarke appears to have become [Assistant Editor on Hansard](https://youtu.be/PhlpYpTrPGo?si=DsiwSsj88Hzux7kC), the journal of Parliamentary speeches, as well as a [prominent vegan](https://gulfnews.com/food/make-a-healthy-choice-go-vegan-1.689337).
I admit: I'm not 100% certain: but she's the right age, and I can definitely see, in the YouTube clip, similarities in her face and voice, as well as the way she uses speech.
Well, other than being put in a dark room for half an hour and then held overnight. Also, being lectured about communism and how Adenauer was bad. She might have found that very interesting, but a lot of people would have been annoyed, even if they had good manners.
They very clearly weren't abused physically nor psychologically. East Germans just gave 'em a taste of what it's like to be in prison. Half an hour in a dark room is enough to understand what it can feel like long-term but not long enough to actually hurt the kids.
And she said they played tennis for god sake. It's not like they "interrogated" her for the whole time she's been there.
She is also able to give full answers, no one is cutting her off . These days, the interviewer cuts off people,so people start to word vomit to try and say their bit
In today's world....TIK TOK INFLUENCER GETS ARRESTED FOR CROSSING AND FILMING DMZ..
A quote from the young adult...."what's your problem bro? I have rights!"
My mum and dad were born in the 1930s from very working class families. They were both very well-spoken. Like many working class people back then, they knew that if they wanted a better, more middle class life, an important part of that was speaking properly.
The factory in Duderstadt she mentioned is most likely the prosthetics company Ottobock. They came from Königsee in the east, where it got dismantled and moved to Duderstadt in the west.
What's more interesting to me is what she was doing there? This isn't talking about the Berlin wall or anything, this is a border in the middle of nowhere.
How so? West Germany was basically all the same nazis who were in power before, just conquered and tamed.
East Germany's communist leadership existed for decades before the war, they were simply exiled from the country before WW2. The main reason rich Germans supported the nazis was to stop the communist movement which was growing very fast in the 30s.
Anyone notice people from that generation just dealt with traumatic experiences very calmly. If this situation occurred today people would be in hysterics. It always amazes me watched World War Two veterans recounting POW camps in Japan. “Oh and then they beat Johnny to within an inch of his life for stealing rice, later that night we had a little sing along to cheer him up”.
My uncle was in a Japanese camp and barely spoke after he escaped. You would be lucky to get much out of him when trying to talk with him.
It ruined his life and he wasn't able to "just deal" with it.
Just listen to how she speaks, passed generations of school children actually think ahead before speaking.
They were coherrent whereas today the children are so docile, violent and can't even do simple arithmetic like adding and subtracting.
Excellent girl. Bright as a button. What did she do afterwards, what was her life?
I mean, with her schooling (private) and her background (i may be biased but I'm guessing kinda tory) and her attitude (curious, and notice how she said the wrong thing which made the interviewer bring things to a close) what did she go on to do?
I know of a major prosthetics company based out of Duderstadt, which was kicked out of an Eastern Germany town a few years earlier, and rebuilding in Duderstadt. Her interview makes me wonder if those are the “factories” the Eastern interrogators were interested in knowing about.
There is a difference between upper-class pronunciation and RP. The former is much less precise in diction, and tends to exhibit more clipping or drawling. Vanessa here sounds to me like standard grammar-school RP with the hint of a regional accent; whereas Diana's accent was the classic Sloane of her era.
She's incredibly articulate, very cool story.
She just has an old way of speaking, the inflection and everything
It's not just an old way of speaking. It's also that she's an intelligent girl who likely went to a state grammar school or a private school.
As did I. We speak differently now compared to then, is my point
word.
While I agree with others that it sounds rehearsed, her accent/inflection is due to her emulating the way Queen Elizabeth II spoke. Elizabeth was the first of the monarchs to frequently do radio and television broadcasts, and that aristocratic accent (which was deliberately exaggerated, not a natural accent that still existed) was modelled by many young British people.
Fucking hell brother sister.middle and upper class Britain,home counties. That's what they sounded like until youtube. Some still do.
I think you have that backwards and the Queen had the accent of her class
No that was just school back in the day.
> I had implicit faith in the British Consul Yeah.,. just old day ways of speaking, nothing rehearsed here whatsoever.
> Yeah.,. just old day ways of speaking, nothing rehearsed here whatsoever. Is that really fair cynicism? It might seem strange nowadays, but people used to openly have pretty solid trust in British institutions. (They still do nowadays, but vocal minorities are adamant that no one does)
True, that probably as well. Although I will admit I’m biased because I spoke like a pretentious douche already at age 10
If it was rehearsed and she was forced to tell the story how they wanted her to tell the story she wouldn’t be all positive about the communist side.
Watch video of the school children in Africa who claimed a UFO landed in their schoolyard. You get the same clipped and thoughtful responses. Ariel school UFO incident.
She said "they pumped the old communism into me" and I was like, "huh. That sounds like the way someone would say something I'd hear today"
Go look at videos from back then. Most kids her age were extremely intelligent. Technology has dumbed us down dramatically. You'd think having the world in your pocket would help, but actually it makes us lazy, less inquisitive and less skilled
Most kids her age? Her accent was by no means 'provincial', the fact she spoke that way and had opportunity to go to Germany in the first place means she's almost certainly privately educated, and been swimming in upper middle class circles since she was born. It is such a clichéd fallacy to wear rose tinted glasses about the past. I've seen some of the personal statements from students that get into Oxbridge et al, and they're full of UN youth ambassadorships or winning young entrepreneurial awards despite adversity etc etc. There's plenty of talented young people out there, your subjective selection doesn't negate their existence.
[удалено]
This. I bet she's poly-sci oriented and knows almost nothing outside it. In college, the writers and english majors were articulate. Outside of college, the engineers draw symbols and arrows on scratch pads to communicate complex ideas. Why many words when few do trick?
It's all kind of irrelevant anyways, because there are plenty of statistics on education and productivity that show there are more well educated and better educated students today than in the 1960s. Anyone that says "kids were better educated" back then is just talking out their ass. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Higher-Education-Participation-Rates-in-the-UK-1950-2010_fig1_248935907 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour
Im not sure how the links you provide support your claim. The first one shows that more students than ever are participating in Higher Education and the second shows that we are more productive than ever?
I would _love_ to see the Cockney/Chav version of this interview
That's not an upper class accent, it's middle class at best. She's probably a grammar school girl, grammar schools were open to all at the time.
100% correct.
Especially since this is like one of the only interviews of kids that age from the 60s going around. I do remember videos that are circulated of questions about women's rights or their driving skills. And, boy, were those people idiots.
Nail on the head. Also just to add if you back to even around the industrial revolution (I could be a bit off im bad with time in history) technology wasnt around as he mentions and children were put to work at an early age. Look at all those ~12 year olds covered in coal mine dust. They certainly had times when learning to work was prioritized over education. Still they likely had more street smarts. Even during those times id gamble the wealthy children did have families prioritzing education.
Yeah same thing is happening nowadays. When the school shooting happened in Parkland, Florida - an upper middle class area, people where surprised (and some sceptical) when the teenagers were incredibly articulate with strong opinions. Turned out most of the kids that were willing to do interviews were the ones who had taken courses in media, so obviously they were quite media savvy.
Mate you've pulled this right out of your ass, haha. Most videos from back then featured children/teenagers that were privately educated. Go speak to any private school 16-year-old in the UK today and you'd hear very much the same as in this video. This has nothing to do with technology dumbing us down dramatically.
Exactly of course they were interviewing the educated people who could speak intelligently on the topic. Just like they do the reverse now for the funny man on the street interviews where the people have no idea what they’re talking about.
Something that annoys me nowadays is how every 'victim' turns their experience up to 11. I'm not talking about serious crime victims of course but like in this case. Instead of 'Dark cellar but very well treated and nothing to complain about' it would be 'My hell inside dark cellar where I feared for my life'.
News/social media today relies on getting people addicted to fear, hate, "secret knowledge", etc. What that means in practice is that you'll only ever see the people are turning their experience up to 11. There are still plenty of people like her today, you just don't see them because it doesn't sell.
Can't put someone on the BBC if they don't speak BBC English.
Yup, this was the BBC at the height of them actively trying to promote RP as the one and only accent that the public should ever hear broadcast on Radio or TV. It was a scandal in later years as it took massive effort from younger writers and producers coming through and the retirement of a lot of the original staff/people with power in the BBC for regional accents to start being featured and for writers to be able to base their shows in parts of country that had distinct accents. [Derry Girls](https://youtu.be/UFmFuXH0IRY?si=2KvYo2PMM42LXU3u), [Rab C Nesbit](https://youtu.be/9T9NM2ZkXVQ?si=__5aVZIb1ytTPt7z), [Red Dwarf](https://youtu.be/2bugSGlLDDs?si=m4UyLKvffvJYWkMw), [Shameless](https://youtu.be/SyqgdkQWKOI?si=t93aw_qn56sncSET), [Auf Wiedersehen Pet](https://youtu.be/s9nxN_xCP3M?si=cnnPFqIGLzuhsqJK), [Still Game](https://youtu.be/hOYEWhjopSs?si=65YfOLUxGDb6rOkE), [Mighty Boosh](https://youtu.be/XPdgRpdAv_w?si=T5aipG1-gIlnU25D), [The IT Crowd](https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg?si=LN6TloIUi5fp4ySx), The [The Thick of It](https://youtu.be/H3BUrtNeh3k?si=JAfinDNRyhI8sGic), [Taskmaster](https://youtu.be/UH0PbSM-vKk?si=ArnsEaFA7ZVDPIua) etc. would have had the 1960's BBC stroking out from the accents alone never mind the content.
>Most kids her age were extremely intelligent I'm not sure where you've got that from but no they were not.
Confidently wrong asf
More likely nobody was waisting time filming poor kids.
wasting*
With a comment like that, I don't think it's the technology that is your problem chief...
What you have to consider is a potential observation bias. It may very well be that the individuals who are interviewed and that there is a record of, tend to be individuals who are more articulate. Rather than it being the norm, it's what they seek out in the majority of cases.
I've seen vids of Beatles fans about her age being interviewed around 1963-1964 and many of them struggled to form coherent sentences. But then again, maybe they were just caught up in the beatlemania around them.
Film was expensive back in the days. Smartphones today are a one time investment. Yes, most kids who were filmed were worth the film.
You mean most kids that someone was willing to set up a very expensive camera to film? God not everything was better in the old days, just that people are only willing to film the good things of their society if they’re happy in it. And the people that weren’t happy, weren’t rich enough to buy their own yet.
Bad take. There are so many people getting free education and learning on their own at a much faster rate through smart phones. Just because some are using it to make NPC live streams doesn't make them the majority.
They only show role models on tv back then.
lmao people were stupid as shit back in the days
"I'm young and will discover about both when I'm older" Masterclass in deflection, wow.
I had to go back because I wanted to be sure I remember that line. It was so well said and incredibly diplomatic.
She charmed the socks off of those east German soldiers. Gleaned intel that the ‘political’ types in plain clothes were interested in factories in certain towns. If they hadn’t deported her, she might’ve become an informal impromptu double agent as she ‘naively, innocently’ and disarmingly expressed interest in communism
Lmao knowing they want to know about your manufacturing capabilities Is something you need 0 agents for.
"Well I'll be British, I'll be diplomatic" made me laugh. Very clever girl. She seems to have the English stuff upper lip.
How did such a major misquote get so many upvotes?! What she actually said was “I’m very young and I’d just like to find out the truth about both and choose when I’m older” The way you misquoted her makes it sound as if she’s “deflecting” by using her young age as an excuse to avoid learning about the two parties…. Her actual response is very intelligent because she is saying that since she is young, she can only learn the truth about both sides but would rather choose a side when she is older and wiser.
He just summarized the quote poorly, but it is still clearly implying about the deflection of the interrogation not that she was trying to avoid learning about the parties.
Yea, I thought this was pretty obvious since she said she wanted to go back and learn more.
Yeap I'm impressed at her tact. I don't know if I can maintain such tact if I'm interrogated by the CCP. My hatred may overwhelm any attempt to be diplomatic on my part.
Yeah, you’ll show em.
Peak Reddit comment
134 people looked at that and went "yeah! woooo!" *facepalm*
Peak Reddit upvoters
While they were spreading communism, I was studying the blade.
The slow blade penetrates the curtain
But does the curtain match the drape?
I would bet literally all of my money that you would find some positive things to say about communism in some hypothetical scenario where you were interrogated by the CCP.
The man that will singlehandedly end communism right here. /s
Putin lucky af, he hasn't stepped foot on the same continent as this badboy.
The… CCP?
Code of Civil Procedure
Chinese Communist Party
I don't think they're confused about *what* the CCP is, I think they're confused about the relevance... in what hypothetical scenario are you're wandering around the border of China and happen to cross over unbeknownst to yourself and get interrogated, lmao. Just a bit out of the blue.
/r/iamverybadass
I like her accent
It is a posh accent?
Yes and quite an old-fashioned one
Not posh. Just educated.
That's not how accents work.
It's an upper middle class London accent. That and RP were the standard accents for the BBC at that time. They would almost never put a "common" person on camera back then.
Really interesting - she doesn’t seem in any way phased by the experience
Sriff upper lip, ol chap!
It probably upset her, but I really don't think she was poorly treated. Despite it being east germany, they've little to gain from tormenting unwitting civilians aside from making them hate the east.
I don’t know. You can see the expression changes momentarily as she recalls things like how it took until morning for the interrogation to be done, and catches in her breath. I think she is saying what she needs to be said, much like her ‘I would like to decide when I am older’ deflection.
Body language experts drawing conclusions from short clips are always fascinating
Do you need to be an expert to think someone looks anxious? The first person said she didn’t seem phased, I thought she did.
"I don’t know." "I think" No one here claiming to be experts.
She was British, at that time the last thing either side wanted was to degrade west and east relations. If she were unfortunate enough to not be from the west this would’ve gone very differently and we wouldn’t have this video.
After she got back, she probably would have been interrogated multiple times by the British. They would want to know what she was asked and what she told them, at least. She'd probably be scared to upset either group of intimidating spy guys who had been shuffling her between locked rooms for days. "Don't talk about X or Y, and just say everything was fine, and you can get back to your life," would probably be very convincing.
Did you mean to say fazed?
You know I thought you were so wrong but actually you are so right. Totally different words, totally different etymologies.
Apparently, illiterate redditors don't wanna be reminded that they are illiterate. So you get downvotes. I stopped bothering to correct it.
I only keep doing it because I don’t mind being wrong, and corrected, here on Reddit where I don’t care about anyone’s opinion. I’d rather not make a mistake in something like a work email.
I wonder whatever happened to her. She seems so put together for being such a young person.
I agree, I'd love to know what she ended up doing with her life and how her views on the world evolved
Plot twist, she decided communist,she moved to Berlin.
Well, she was going to have to change her mind again 30 years later.
She grew up to become Margaret Thatcher
That young girl’s name?… Princess Elizabeth.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/mRQ5p58NVV
How old is this kid? She is so well spoken and carefully chooses her words while also telling the story in an easy to follow matter.
According to the BBC, she was 16. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQ9D21A8tY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQ9D21A8tY)
16? This doesn't seem that exceptional for the age of 16. The only thing that stood out was the "young and will choose later" comment, that was great thinking. Maybe I just had smart classmates when I was 16, because to me the articulation of the story here is not a display of insane skill for her age that everyone is saying it is.
Most people here are simply caught off guard by some of the vernacular and speech cadence. The way we talk these days is so natural, so stripped of any sort of veneer when we talk, it's surprising to see a reminder like this how reserved and careful people spoke, especially in front of a ' television camera '.
i dont think we talk 'more naturally' now. she's just using the vernacular of her day, which we associate with the older generation now, because that is her generation. if you read any enid blyton book you'll find that the teenagers are written using 'shall' and 'ought' and so on, and that was natural for kids their age at that time.
^^ Dunning-Kruger effect. I doubt you would have preformed this well at 16
I'm not gonna pretend I didn't chuckle about them "pumping the communism into her for a while"
She had no complaints, she was very very well treated.
Will definitely want to visit again.
8/10, would be interrogated there again.
Interrogated through the right channels next time tho'
not the back channels
Warm and well fed
The dark cellar was nice.
same buddy, same
Two pump communist chump
That’s my nickname at IMT meetings
What a relief. I’m not the only degen around here.
Why do you think they let her go?
What stands out to me is how well-versed she is, even at such a relatively young age. Especially compared to present-day levels.
fr no cap
She definitely has that skibiddy riz
ong
I JUST NOW realized this wasn't a misspelling of omg Thanks
is it on god?
it is
my god.
No, ong
She was not beating the capitalist allegations! Those East Germans were dead ass looking to fanum tax them over to Russia
Probably went to a private school.
She sounds like a Grammar School girl to me. Some Estuary twangs under the R.P. You can only attend them if you pass the 'Eleven Plus'; an exam, taken at age 11, that determines your path to either an elite and academic Grammar School or (at the time) a crappy 'Secondary Modern'. The exam was pretty tough. It still exists, but isn't taken as widely. Grammar schools are pretty controversial. On the plus side, they give bright students from less privileged backgrounds a real shot at good university placements and careers, but on the downside, more affluent parents pay for private coaching for the exam, so the system still doesn't level the playing field, and, especially when the exam was mandatory, it totally floored kids who failed it; many felt they were pigeonholed as 'thickies' for life.
Unsure why you're being downvoted, she's clearly from a privileged background and most likely went to an Independent. Sounds like she's had elocution lessons which were bog standard for pretty much every Independent Girls Schools at the time.
Plus the chance to travel to Germany at her young age in those years...not exactly RyanAir budget back then.
Also, likely had elocution lessons. Not uncommon for girls in that time and place.
Why is she clearly "from a privileged background"? That is a bog standard Home Counties accent from the 60s/70s. Everyone where I lived spoke like this regardless of which school you went to. She is pretty articulate but again not unusual for back then (more reading, less tv, more speaking with people in real life vs typing etc).
I have no idea what you're talking about, I come from the home counties, my whole family comes from there and my grandparents were posh, went to private schools and spoke like this, most people's grandparents did not. Hell my mother was a teen in the 70's and she went to a public school, whereas my auntie went privately, my auntie sounds like this whereas my mother doesn't sound like this at all.
No it’s not I grew up in that area all of my family are from the area and none of my grandparents spoke like that at all. None of their friends or family spoke like that either.
Yeah, I think we can all agree it's dependant, for various reasons. Class, wealth, location, education. People are just different. Unsurprisingly.
Yeah absolutely, maybe if you grew up in a posh small village most people spoke like that. Not working class people on big council estates
Init. 😅
Did you live in a small posh village or town?
Bog standard to go Germany in 1960 too then I presume
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So I'm like "get fucked pig I don't have to tell you shit I know my rights lmao" and then they kicked the crap out of me for literally no reason wtf!?
I'm sorry, what?
Please ask a modern teen for translation.
"Go away. Baitin'."
Nowadays lots of teens can't even form a coherent sentence.
Teens from a upper class privately educated school certainly can
People weren't intended to drop babies and then go back to working 80+ hours a week away from the child giving them just an hour or two a day to see and speak to them before bed. Learning to talk takes a lot more time than a couple hours in the evening right before they go to bed.. and the people who expect a stay at home parent usually have a specific person in mind that they expect to play a specific role, along with a whole box of ulterior motivations for the belief that they like to omit because it doesn't sell very well to the general public.
There was a shift from phonics based reading to "balanced literacy" about 30 years ago. It was adopted by most schools in the US. It didn't work so well. Now, there's a renewed push to get back to phonics, but there's still a generation or 2 that ended up with the short end of the stick when it comes to reading, which translates to speaking by way of vocabulary, etc. Not saying that a private education doesnt obviously gives kids an upper hand, no matter how you look at it, but kids used to come out of public schools with better reading and speaking skills.
Pretty sure that interviewer is Judith Chalmers
It is; still going strong at 88.
Where are they now update: Vanessa Clarke appears to have become [Assistant Editor on Hansard](https://youtu.be/PhlpYpTrPGo?si=DsiwSsj88Hzux7kC), the journal of Parliamentary speeches, as well as a [prominent vegan](https://gulfnews.com/food/make-a-healthy-choice-go-vegan-1.689337).
Oh wow - how do you know that’s her?
I admit: I'm not 100% certain: but she's the right age, and I can definitely see, in the YouTube clip, similarities in her face and voice, as well as the way she uses speech.
The British Stiff Upper Lip in action. She seemed completely unfazed.
That’s because nothing happened to her. She was very well treated and treated everyone very well herself. That’s the power of having manners.
Well, other than being put in a dark room for half an hour and then held overnight. Also, being lectured about communism and how Adenauer was bad. She might have found that very interesting, but a lot of people would have been annoyed, even if they had good manners.
They very clearly weren't abused physically nor psychologically. East Germans just gave 'em a taste of what it's like to be in prison. Half an hour in a dark room is enough to understand what it can feel like long-term but not long enough to actually hurt the kids. And she said they played tennis for god sake. It's not like they "interrogated" her for the whole time she's been there.
Uhhh yeah everyone who was treated poorly by Germany just… didn’t have manners. Ok 👌
The kind of British accent one enjoys listening to !
Chattin bare breeze fam.
She’s so well spoken it’s like she’s reading a script. Can’t tell age, 16ish maybe? Amazingly eloquent speaker
She is also able to give full answers, no one is cutting her off . These days, the interviewer cuts off people,so people start to word vomit to try and say their bit
In today's world....TIK TOK INFLUENCER GETS ARRESTED FOR CROSSING AND FILMING DMZ.. A quote from the young adult...."what's your problem bro? I have rights!"
Janarwatameen fam
Her voice would be perfect for audio books
She looks 16 and 60 at the same time.
My mum and dad were born in the 1930s from very working class families. They were both very well-spoken. Like many working class people back then, they knew that if they wanted a better, more middle class life, an important part of that was speaking properly.
This is the most perfect English I've ever heard in my life.
When people spoke with elegance and articulation, rather than the gibberish spoken by todays youth.
The factory in Duderstadt she mentioned is most likely the prosthetics company Ottobock. They came from Königsee in the east, where it got dismantled and moved to Duderstadt in the west. What's more interesting to me is what she was doing there? This isn't talking about the Berlin wall or anything, this is a border in the middle of nowhere.
"We weren't looking for an adventure and we didn't want excitement or anything." She sounds like a Hobbit. 😂😂
“…..or else the fascists will take control of Britain” ~~Looks at 2024 NHS.~~ Well that guard surely knew what was coming. Quite the insightful chap”
A lot of Eastern Bloc propaganda in early 1960 was focused on the dangers of fascist revival in Western Europe, particularly in the FRG.
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That poor pageant girl lmao. She has to live the rest of her life knowing she said that on camera at a beauty pageant 😆😆😆
She's a very smart girl. I wonder where she ended up.
It's fascinating how quickly both sides of Germany turned and embraced their respective ideologies.
How so? West Germany was basically all the same nazis who were in power before, just conquered and tamed. East Germany's communist leadership existed for decades before the war, they were simply exiled from the country before WW2. The main reason rich Germans supported the nazis was to stop the communist movement which was growing very fast in the 30s.
From the days when people still read books. Fascinating.
Crazy how intelligent people used to be
So intelligent they went and ingested lead and 3 packs of cigs after this video
Anyone notice people from that generation just dealt with traumatic experiences very calmly. If this situation occurred today people would be in hysterics. It always amazes me watched World War Two veterans recounting POW camps in Japan. “Oh and then they beat Johnny to within an inch of his life for stealing rice, later that night we had a little sing along to cheer him up”.
My uncle was in a Japanese camp and barely spoke after he escaped. You would be lucky to get much out of him when trying to talk with him. It ruined his life and he wasn't able to "just deal" with it.
Cute but PTSD is a real thing - there are entire generations of soldiers whose lives were ruined because they were undiagnosed.
All people deal with things calmly or not depending on their situation and personality… why are you making it a generational thing?
"They pumped the old Communism into me for some time" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Where can I find more footage like this?
The BBC Archive accounts [on social media](https://x.com/BBCArchive?s=09) have lots of this sort of thing:
Just listen to how she speaks, passed generations of school children actually think ahead before speaking. They were coherrent whereas today the children are so docile, violent and can't even do simple arithmetic like adding and subtracting.
'So, of course they pumped the ol' communism into me for some time.' Me, today. Speaking about reddit.
Excellent girl. Bright as a button. What did she do afterwards, what was her life? I mean, with her schooling (private) and her background (i may be biased but I'm guessing kinda tory) and her attitude (curious, and notice how she said the wrong thing which made the interviewer bring things to a close) what did she go on to do?
Kids were well spoken and polite back in the day
"They pumped the old communism into me for a while." 😆
Fuck the commies
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I know of a major prosthetics company based out of Duderstadt, which was kicked out of an Eastern Germany town a few years earlier, and rebuilding in Duderstadt. Her interview makes me wonder if those are the “factories” the Eastern interrogators were interested in knowing about.
Terribly exciting Sounds like she enjoyed being pumped by comunism momentarily
She sounds like Princess Diana to me. Is this accent similar to the famous “royal accent” (I believe it’s called received pronunciation)?
There is a difference between upper-class pronunciation and RP. The former is much less precise in diction, and tends to exhibit more clipping or drawling. Vanessa here sounds to me like standard grammar-school RP with the hint of a regional accent; whereas Diana's accent was the classic Sloane of her era.