Belgrave Square at Wilton and Grosvenor Crescents, SW1

The year before he made The Third Man, Carol Reed brought another Graham Greene story to the screen. The headquarters of the St John’s Ambulance organisation at the northeast corner of Belgrave Square, on Wilton and Grosvenor Crescents, became the ‘French Embassy’, where butler Ralph Richardson comes close to being falsely arrested for murder. The maze of narrow mews streets where Richardson clandestinely meets with Michele Morgan, and where young Bobby Henrey gets lost, have moved seriously upmarket from the pub-n-cafe atmosphere of the movie. They are Belgrave Mews and Kinnerton Street, just to the north of Belgrave Square.

The Fallen Idol (1948, dir: Carol Reed)