Why are fantasy world accents British?

[narfforc]

I think it's something to do with how the rest of the English speaking world see's England as an old realm, somewhere almost ancient compared to where they find themselves in the modern world. The strange thing is, why don't those who used to be The Colonies speak with accents like ours, after all most of them came from here (England). I think the truth is, their accents are probably closer to how we used to speak back then than ours are today....therein lies the irony.

The other possibility is to look at all the accents from the British Isles and put them in a blender and you'll get New World accents. I don't think it should really matter, I enjoyed the American Radio Hobbit without any problem at all, if anything I dislike the visual imagery of the Hildebrandt Musketeer Fellowship more. One only has to look at the brilliant voice characterisation of Nicol Williamson's The Hobbit to know that Dwarves are from the North of England and not Scotland, Gollum is Welsh and the hobbits come from the West Country, so a pat on the back for Sean Astin's marvellous attempt.