The Three Kings, 7 Clerkenwell Close, EC1

Just off Clerkenwell Green, opposite St James’s Church, the folky and funky Three Kings has a bit of a student union feel: part art gallery (the quirky exhibits are for sale) and part music bar (with an eclectic policy), there are regular Beat Club nights (admission charge). Poetry alert: readings can sometimes be brilliant, but can also have you staring into your drink praying for deliverance. An endangered species in an age of designer makeovers.

In Mike Newell’s 1985 Dance With A Stranger, The Three Kings stands in for the Magdala Tavern, the Hampstead pub outside which Ruth Ellis shot dead her upper-class boyfriend David Blakeley in 1955. The public revulsion caused by Ellis’s execution contributed toward the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

At St James’s Church itself, Will (Hugh Grant) almost volunteers for the drop-in centre in About a Boy. The cool credentials of Jude (Jude Law) are established by introducing him strolling along Clerkenwell Close, with St James in the background, in the bizarrely indulgent gangster movie Love, Honour and Obey.

Trivia: at the real Magdala Tavern, opposite Hampstead Heath station in South End Green, two bullet holes can still be seen in its tiled frontage.

Dance With A Stranger (1985, dir: Mike Newell)
About A Boy (2002, dir: Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz)
Love, Honour And Obey (2000, dir: Dominic Anciano, Ray Burdis)