The Enid Blyton Society

     There's no accounting for how people interpret it. One of those who took me for British was a railway station attendant at Waterloo Station I made enquiries of when I was visiting Britain in 2014. I don't really know how many would do that, though.
     But I have a very strong tendency to use long A's in words like "France", "castle", "plant", "example", and many others, and additionally, I just speak very precisely and properly, and I think these things sound very British to many in Australia at least, where I fancy some of these older-style habits I have retained seem to me to be becoming less common. My brothers lost their long A's decades ago, if they ever had them - but my mother has kept them, as well as very proper speech in general.
     Oddly enough, I don't recall whether my father used long A's or not - he died in 1997, and details of memory about such things are fading a bit - but he generally spoke properly, too, in a rather old-fashioned kind of way that you'd expect to have long A's - so quite possibly he did.

Regards, Michael.

Maybe that's why many Brummies get mistaken for Australians by Americans, as I guess most Americans believe all British people use 'long A's' - which most Midlands/Northern people don't! I would never say 'graaaaas' or 'paaaass' or 'laaast' or Fraaaance!

The accent associated with the high-status or "Brahmin" class of Boston does sound a great deal like a RP British accent, but it has been dying out. You can still occasionally meet an elderly Bostonian who still speaks with that old accent.