Category: England
UK Film Locations for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
UK Setting Steals the Show
Charlie Hunnam, starring in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, pictured on location in Scotland. © 2017 Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved
Wringing praise from critics for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword has been as challenging as, well, wriggling that stubborn blade from a stone. But the mythical landscape, filmed entirely in the United Kingdom, proves to be just the ticket…or at least, worth the price of one.
Here’s a quick look at the highs and lows of a movie which, at times, can be as challenging as the terrain. (more…)
Grand Designs Live: Great Gadgets & DIY Inspiration
Kevin McCloud (far right) on stage at the Grand Designs Live Grand Theatre.
At least one night each week, you’ll find me on my sofa, bowl of popcorn in hand, feet propped on the coffee table, and eyes glued to the TV screen as one of my favourite dramas unfolds. At times, the tension is almost too much to bear. Will a family be torn asunder, a marriage destroyed, dreams shattered like a sheet of two-storey glass installed by a rickety crane while the rain blows sideways over a windy moor?
That’s right. This isn’t one of those dark, moody murder mysteries where corpses pile up like cords of wood. It’s Grand Designs, the long-running British home-building series, where cords of wood pile up like corpses.
This week at Grand Designs Live, fans of the show have an opportunity to meet Grand Designs’ host, architect Kevin McCloud, and some of the fearless folks who have dared to translate their castles in the air into genuine bricks and mortar (or occasionally, straw and daub).
Tom Raffield (right) and Kevin McCloud discuss how Tom and his partner Danielle transformed their cottage with their own bent-wood designs.
The event runs through 7th May 2017 at London’s ExCeL Centre, and in October, it heads to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham—England, that is. (Sorry, Alabama). Click HERE for a special discount code, offering two tickets to the London show for £22.
For aspiring builders and renovators, Grand Designs Live offers a wealth of resources. You can attend design lectures, meet with architects to discuss your own plans, and chat with hundreds of vendors selling everything you ever needed for your abode, alongside loads of stuff you’ll never actually need but can’t live without once you’ve seen it.
There are acres of great home inventions to explore. Here are a handful that captured my imagination. (more…)
The English Cotswolds: Ready for their Close-Up
Broadway Village
Honey-hued villages. Historic old mansions. Towering cathedral spires, and woolly white sheep grazing in green fields or upon snow-dusted slopes, a terrestrial reflection of cotton candy clouds suspended in a cerulean sky.
The bucolic beauty of the English Cotswolds are so improbably alluring at any time of year, they might have been built on a Hollywood backlot. It’s hardly surprising, then, that filmmakers flock to this photogenic swathe of twee stone towns. The region dips and rolls across south central England, encompassing Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire as it unfurls over 90 miles from south of Stratford-upon-Avon to just south of Bath.
Foxglove in the fields of Nether Westcote
COTSWOLDS FILM AND TELEVISION CREDITS
Oxford is the main setting for the British crime mystery drama “Inspector Morse,” and its two spin-off series, “Inspector Lewis” and “Endeavor.” The nearby village of Bampton doubled as Downton, where the Grantham family’s triumphs and tragedies played out over six seasons on “Downton Abbey,” and Winston Churchill’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace, appeared in The Young Victoria and Disney’s 2015 remake of Cinderella.
All Souls College in Oxford, England
Chavenage House featured in “Poldark” as well as the superb “Wolf Hall,” which also guest-starred Berkeley Castle and Gloucester Cathedral.
Gloucester Cathedral. Courtesy Visit Britain.
In fact, Gloucester Cathedral has appeared in so many productions, including the Harry Potter franchise, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and “Sherlock,” that I expect it’s now demanding its own dressing room complete with an albino monkey named Gary, two dozen rare orchids gathered by Tibetan monks under the light of a blood moon, and a hypoallergenic solid-gold toilet that flushes pure Evian.
That list barely scratches the celluloid surface of the Cotswolds’ impressive reel of credits.