Changing the default spelling dictionary to British English

[Peter Flynn]

I can't seem to find any mention in the FAQ or on web sites about how to 
change the default spellcheck dictionary from American English to 
British English (permanently), and it doesn't seem to be a config option 
in the Emacs menus. I'm using Emacs 23 as shipped with Ubuntu 10.4 and 
the only check I run is M-x ispell-buffer RET

Or is this something that has to be configured externally, in some 
ispell config?

///Peter