Whiteleys, 151 Queensway, W2

London’s first real giant department store, recently given a flashy makeover and now housing an eight-screen multiplex, is the site of the exhibition of photographs by Anna (Julia Roberts) in Closer. You can glimpse its galleried atrium, decked out for Christmas, toward the opening of Richard Curtis’s Love Actually.

Previously, it was where agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) uses the shoe store pedoscope (a primitive X-ray device used to check the fit of shoes) to check out the contents of a suspicious flask in Ken Russell’s flashy Sixties spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain. In 1970, down-at-heel cellist Wanda Fleming (Bette Davis) does her shopping here in Connecting Rooms.

The store’s founder, Yorkshireman William Whiteley, was not averse to expecting his female staff to indulge in extracurricular activities, and was shot on the store’s premises in 1907 by a young man claiming to be his unacknowledged son.

Trivia: the murder of William Whiteley inspired the plotline of Gosford Park.

Whiteleys

Closer (2004, dir: Mike Nichols)
Love Actually (2003, dir: Richard Curtis)
Billion Dollar Brain (1967, dir: Ken Russell)
Connecting Rooms (1970, dir: Franklin Gollings)