Westminster Abbey, SW1
Despite being uncomfortably mobbed by visitors, there’s an undeniable sense of history in the vast and venerable abbey, site of every coronation since the 11th century, and last resting place of many of the country’s monarchs, including Richard II, Henry V and Elizabeth I. Writers such as Chaucer, Dickens, Kipling, composers Handel and Purcell, and actors Garrick, Irving and Lord Olivier. And, of course, Sir Isaac Newton.
Which is what brings Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) to the Abbey in The Da Vinci Code. Not that there was any filming allowed inside the Abbey, which deemed the book “theologically unsound”. Though “crap” describes it in seven fewer syllables.
Although it's obviously the real exterior, from which Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen) is led jabbering away, Newton’s tomb was recreated inside Lincoln Cathedral, where there was no problem with filming.
Not surprisingly, there’s little filming inside the Abbey. 1955’s The Quatermass Xperiment, the film version of Nigel Kneale’s groundbreaking Fifties sci-fi TV series, climaxes with the blobby alien cornered in the Abbey. With all those flaming tentacles flailing about in the nave, the interior of the venerable church had to be faked in the studio. The coronation of Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich) in spy spoof Johnny English uses St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire.
The Da Vinci Code (2006, dir: Ron Howard)
Johnny English (2003, dir: Peter Howitt)
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955, dir: Val Guest)
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