I’d thought I knew The Blue Lamp, the film in which George Dixon was shot dead, pretty well, so I began to watch it half-heartedly last night. It wasn’t the acting so much as the streets of Notting Hill that soon grabbed my attention (though it was nice to see Sam Kydd turn up towards the end as a bookie at White City Stadium).

The streets of Notting Hill look very different today
The film was released in 1950, and some of the buildings show the effects of wartime bombing. But there is far more of interest among the independent small shops than most of these streets possess today. It is a pleasure just to look at them half a century on.
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Written from christopher.howse@telegraph.co.uk (Christopher Howse) by news.