Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7

Kensington’s Royal Albert Hall is the site of the climactic concert in both versions (1934 and 1956) of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. Hitch treats the climax of the 1956 version as a silent movie – there's no dialogue for a full 12 minutes as Doris Day foils the assassination plot.

The hall was the brainchild of Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert, following on the success of his Great Exhibition of 1851. Sadly, the Prince died before the hall was built. It opened in 1871.

No stranger to the screen, it’s the site of sponger Alexis Kanner’s comeuppance at the end of the downbeat 1969 drama Connecting Rooms (with Bette Davis and Michael Redgrave), the fantasy sequence from Sixties classic The Knack, Ann Todd’s concert performance in the 1945 melodrama The Seventh Veil (“If you won't play for me, you won't play for anyone else ever again” snarls James Mason in the film’s greatest line) and the brass band competition finals in Brassed Off (OK, the interior this time is actually Birmingham Town Hall). The Hall can also be seen in Follow Me!, The Fourth Protocol and, hold on there! Spiceworld – The Movie.

On the steps south of the Royal Albert Hall, Sidney J Furie livened up a standard fist-fight by filming it through the glass panes of a phone booth in The Ipcress File (no, there is no phone booth there).

Trivia: the orchestra conductor in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is a cameo from composer Bernard Herrman, who wrote classic scores for many of Hitchcock’s films, including Psycho and Vertigo.

Royal Albert Hall

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956, dir: Alfred Hitchcock)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, dir: Alfred Hitchcock)
Brassed Off (1996, dir: Mark Herman)
Spiceworld – The Movie (1997, dir: Bob Spiers)
The Fourth Protocol (1987, dir: John Mackenzie)
The Knack... And How To Get It (1965, dir: Richard Lester)
Connecting Rooms (1970, dir: Franklin Gollings)
Follow Me! (1972, dir: Carol Reed)
The Seventh Veil (1945, dir: Compton Bennett)
The Ipcress File (1965, dir: Sidney J Furie)