On September 7, 1931, the Granada Cinema was inaugurated in the heart of Wandsworth. Performing that night were the trumpeters of The Life Guards and Alex Taylor on his Wurlitzer organ. The feature film was Monte Carlo and the short was Two Crowded Hours directed by Michael Powell. Until 1934, the film calendar of this Art Deco jewel in the heart of London was supplemented with theatre and musical performances and even a small circus with live elephants. There was also a cafe at the entrance which overlooked the foyer and the Granada even boasted of an “electric” kitchen, a 250-spot parking lot and a carriage space for mothers and their children. The building which houses what is, today, still considered the most spectacular cinema in all of Great Britain, is the result of a design by the great cinema and theatre architect Cecil A. Massey for Sidney Bernstein. The interior, meanwhile, was a result of the creativity of the Russian theatre designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. From Jerry Lee Lewis to Frank Sinatra, from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles, numerous illustrious performers were hosted on the stage of the Granada. The last performance, on April 28, 1968, were the Bee Gees. Then, in the ‘60s, its decline began. It was closed definitively on November 10, 1973. It went unused for almost three years until October 14, 1976, when it reopened as Granada Bingo Club, Tooting.
A major exhibition at the British explores the final years of Renaissance Master Michelangelo Buonarroti's life by focusing on how his art and faith evolved through the shared challenge of aging in a rapidly changing world.
Five decades of iconic Country music photography from photographer Alan Messer as he presents his historic collection that captures the hearts of Nashville legends.
The Hay Wain is a painting by John Constable, completed in 1821, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It is regarded as "Constable's most famous image" and one of the greatest and most popular English paintings of all times.
Darren Almond uses sculpture, film and photography to produce works that harness the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places and situations, producing works that have universal and personal resonances. Today he works on the "sense of time".