Senate House, the University of London, Malet Street, WC1

Minimalist Manhattan deco or European Brutalism? On Malet Street, at Montague Place, stands the dazzling white Portland stone tower of the University of London. Legend has it that George Orwell based 1984’s sinister Ministry of Truth on Senate House, and the severe, no-nonsense lines of its interior made it the ideal fascist bunker for the newly-crowned king (Ian McKellen) in Richard Loncraine’s thirties-set Richard III.

Director Tony Scott has twice passed off the cool marble foyer as a US location. Don’t be fooled by the yellow cabs and the shots of Manhattan streets. The interior of Susan Sarandon’s ‘Park West Clinic’, where David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve attempt to stave off the inevitable ravages of time in Scott’s glossy exercise in vampire-chic The Hunger, is Senate House, as is the entrance lobby of the CIA HQ in ‘Langley, Virginia’, where Robert Redford works, in Scott’s hyperkinetic globetrotting thriller Spy Game.

Senate House also provided the site of the bank robbery in Jonathan Glazer’s quirky gangster movie Sexy Beast, and became the ‘City of Gotham State Courts’ in Batman Begins.

The Hunger (1983, dir: Tony Scott)
Batman Begins (2005, dir: Christopher Nolan)
Richard III (1995, dir: Richard Loncraine)
Spy Game (2001, dir: Tony Scott)
Sexy Beast (2000, dir: Jonathan Glazer)