Four Weddings and a Funeral. If you loved Four Weddings and a Funeral then you'll enjoy staying at Luton Hoo, which provided the staircase down which Kirsten Scott Thomas (Fiona) descended early on in the film, the chapel where David Haigh and Sophie Thompson (Bernard & Lydia) were married and the bedroom where Hugh Grant (Charles) accidentally evesdrops on their honeymoon. The hotel began life as a house built by Robert Adam for the 3rd Earl of Bute between Adam 1767 and 1774. Capability Brown provided the gardens. While visiting the house in 1781 Samuel Johnson exclaimed, "This is one of the places I do not regret coming to see....in the house magnificence is not sacrificed to convenience, nor convenience to magnificence". The house was remodelled in the 1830s to create the neo-classical style we see today. It passed through a number of hands, including the diamond magnate, Sir Julius Wernher who employed the architects of the Ritz Hotel, Charles Mewes and Arthur Davis to remodel the interior at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also received a number or royal visitors, including Queen Victoria's son, the Duke of Clarence who proposed to Princess May of Teck here. (She eventually married his brother, George, and became the formidable Queen Mary.) In due course Wernher's son Harold Augustus married Anastasia “Zia” de Torby, a member of the Russian Imperial family who brought her Fabergé collection to the house. After Lady Zia's death in 1977 the house had a number of uses (including as a film set) until in 2007 when it was converted into Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf and Spa with 228 bedrooms and suites.
The French Lieutenant's Woman. John Fowles' novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was set in Victorian Lyme Regis and was brought to the cinema in 1981 as a film within a film. The Royal Lion featured prominently in Harold Pinter's screenplay as the hotel where Meryl Streep (who was playing an actress called Anna) was staying when she was discovered in bed with co-star Jeremy Irons (playing an actor called Mike). This ambitious film exists in two worlds simultaneously and the Royal Lion features in both. Immediately across the road at No18 High Street are the lodgings where Charles, the Victorian palaeontologist played by Mike (played by Jeremy Irons) is lodged. You have to keep your wits around you watching this film! The Royal Lion with its distinctive bay window, decorated with three Prince of Wales feathers, overhangs Broad Street and dates back to 1601 when it served as a coaching inn. Recent refurbishment has added a swimming pool, but the original oak beams, wood panelling and open fires have been retained and exude a very nineteenth century air. Just down the High Street guests get their first view of the Cobb, which was not just the setting for the opening shot of The French Lieutenant's Woman but also features in the 1995 film of Jane Austen's Persuasion with Ciarian Hinds and Amanda Root as another pair of star-crossed lovers.
Witchfinder General. Anyone who has seen Hammer's sinister Witchfinder General, a tale of anarchy during the English Civil War will recognise Lavenham's village green as the place where Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price) burns his witches. The Great House Hotel and Restaurant is clearly visible behind one innocent “witch” as she is lowered into the flames, although it was made to look a lot scruffier in the 1968 film. The director of the film Michael Reeves grew up in Suffolk and knew Lavenham well. He died at the tragically early age of 25 in 1969. Today this fifteenth-century building with its imposing eighteenth-century façade offers some of the best accommodation in Suffolk. It also has a superb restaurant for which booking is always essential. The menu is French with local ingredients and the waitstaff entirely French. Bedrooms are elegantly and lightly decorated with espresso machines, wifi, hifi and a complementary decanter of sherry. You could not find yourself further away from the seventeenth-century world of Hammer's film (which is 2005 was named the 15th greatest horror film of all time by the magazine Total Film). And thank goodness for that!
Persuasion. Arriving in Bath feels like stepping into a film set. You could be mistaken for thinking that it was built just so that the BBC could adapt Jane Austen novels although Jane's letters tell us she did not much care for the city. Nevertheless the climax of Persuasion, a story of love lost and found again, was set in Bath and filmed there in 1995. Amanda Root as Anne Elliot and Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth were the lovers divided by interfering friends and family in possibly the best of all Jane Austen adaptations. The Assembly Rooms where Anne begs Captain Wentworth not to walk out on a recital is just at the bottom of Russell Street where sits the Queensbury Hotel. A number of scenes in the film were shot in this part of Bath, which is parallel with the famous Royal Crescent and delightful Oval. Laurence and Helen Beere, who run this lovely 29-bedroom hotel, have taken its name from the fiery Ninth Marquess of Queensberry who laid down the rules for boxing. A list of their own more amiable “Queensberry Rules” is displayed in the stone walled garden. Ask for an attic room. The hotel offers some excellent views across Georgian Bath.
One Fine Day. Nira Caledonian in Edinburgh's Gloucester Place is no distance from the spot on Moray Place where Dex (Jim Sturgess) introduces Emma (Ann Hathaway) to his parents in the sweetly doomed romance, One Day. Lovers of that film will enjoy sauntering the three minutes up Doune Terrace to where the unexpected – and frustrating – meeting took place. There are currently four Nira hotels across the world, all of them very different. The company describes its ethos as “havens of stylish and elegant escapism for nomadic people who realise that sincerity and enthusiasm are the qualities that create a spirit of genuine hospitality”. Nira's Edinburgh hotel is made up of a number of Georgian townhouses in Edinburgh's New Town. Here the designers have eschewed tartan in favour of lots of black and gold and contemporary interpretations of Caledonian cool but the hotel still offers 25 Scottish single malts in the bar. Downstairs Blackwood's restaurant, overseen by Head Chef David Scott, uses the best Scottish beef and salmon. Although it might be a bit out of the price range of those two students who begin the film in 1988 it would definitely be somewhere that Dex would have aspired to.
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