I rarely get to the cinema these days and do most of my catching up with the latest films on the two or three long-haul flights I do every year. So it was last Spring, I found myself 33,000 above the North Atlantic Ocean, watching The Death of Stalin. The film itself was somewhat disappointing, and I was considering changing to another movie when something caught my attention. It was a scene in a study in Stalin’s quarters, in which Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) was talking to Maria Veniaminovna Yudina (Olga Kurylenko), but it wasn’t the “drama” that caught my attention; it was the study itself.
The room was somehow familiar, and then, in following scenes set in the tyrant’s abode, I saw other rooms that I thought I recognised. However, my mild curiosity over the apparent familiarity of the movie-set for Stalin’s quarters was insufficient to maintain any interest in the alleged black comic-drama and a short while later I was watching something else.
And, until yesterday, when I began preparing my next post for this site, the film and the film-set had completely slipped from my mind. The post I was preparing was to have been a brief history of my old school, Carmel College, and my experiences as a pupil there. But, when researching some details about the Victorian mansion that I had known as School House, I made some discoveries which seemed to offer me the prospect of a more interesting piece than the one I was originally working on.
Presented below are several photographs of locations from the late Carmel College with captions describing their respective roles in 20th century British architecture; inspiring the world’s longest running play and indirectly one of the world’s most successful board games; in British Cinema; and finally, in military history…
The Victorian mansion (that I knew as School House) has the richest history of all the Carmel College buildings. During the Second World War it was HQ for No. 2 Group, RAF Bomber Command, and in 1943 the final reconnaissance briefing for the Dam Busters’ Raid was conducted in what I knew as the headmaster’s study. A few years later it became Agatha Christie’s template for the house in her world record breaking 1952 play for the longest West End run, The Mousetrap. Christie had a huge influence upon Anthony E. Pratt, the creator of Cluedo in 1949. Far more recently , among other things (as mentioned above) the interior of the mansion was the set for Stalin’s quarters in the 2017 movie, The Death of Stalin. The grand entrance hall and staircase, the library and the aforementioned study featured heavily…The Carmel Synagogue was designed by architect Thomas Hancock who also masterminded the entire Carmel Campus. It’s now a grade II listed building and remains one of the most stunning and beautiful Synagogues anywhere in the world. Hancock’s concrete amphitheatre, built at the same time, can just be made out to the left of the picture. Hancock, a Buddhist, developed something of a niche for himself designing houses of worship. including a Hindu temple and most famously the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes. The Synagogue’s interior was used in the 2011 film The Iron Lady as the scene where Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) received voice coaching , and its exterior featured in the 2016 film, Mindhorn…Another grade II listed masterpiece, we just referred to as”the Pyramid”, was actually an art gallery and named in honour of patron of the arts ,Julius Gottlieb and gifted to Carmel College by his son Lieutenant Commander E. J. Gottlieb. The Pyramid and the boathouse upon which it sits was designed by Sir Basil Spence, and is one of the smallest, and best resolved works of Britain’s foremost brutalist architect.The Sports block which contains a large gymnasium, a 25 metre swimming pool and a squash court has been the setting for pop videos and movie scenes. Kylie Minogue and The Kaiser Chiefs shot promotional videos there in 2013 and 2014 respectively, and the pool featured in the 2018 movie, Annihilation (with Natalie Portman)…The exterior of the mansion and its gardens was the setting for the the final part of the 2016 film, The Darkest Dawn. The grounds’ arboretum is most famous for its fabulous Ceders of Lebanon…
5 thoughts on “STALIN, IN THE LIBRARY, WITH A BOUNCING BOMB – or the weird and wonderful incarnations of my old school…”
What fun for you. US cities and states often have offices that promote their locations for films, and it appears Carmel might too. Or perhaps there are past students active in the film industry.
Your might be revealing incredible perception. It’s only occurred to me now that you’ve suggested it, but I was at school with a boy named Adam Samuelson. He was the son of one of the Samuelson Lighting brothers (film geeks will know that their company was / is the biggest motion picture lighting company in the world behind thousands of films…Gandhi (1982), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Howards End (1992), to name but a very few). Perhaps the Samuelson’s familiarity with Carmel College has something to do with its popularity as a film set?
ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA 
What fun for you. US cities and states often have offices that promote their locations for films, and it appears Carmel might too. Or perhaps there are past students active in the film industry.
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Your might be revealing incredible perception. It’s only occurred to me now that you’ve suggested it, but I was at school with a boy named Adam Samuelson. He was the son of one of the Samuelson Lighting brothers (film geeks will know that their company was / is the biggest motion picture lighting company in the world behind thousands of films…Gandhi (1982), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Howards End (1992), to name but a very few). Perhaps the Samuelson’s familiarity with Carmel College has something to do with its popularity as a film set?
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What a nice and interesting place, Adam.
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Yes it was Ana. I was very fortunate to go there.
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