Commons meets its darkest hour

THE magnificent House of Commons set in Darkest Hour, where I watched Gary Oldman, as Winston Churchill ( pictured), deliver the great statesman’s ‘no surrender’ speech, has been broken up for scrap.

The chamber filled one of the sound stages at leavesden studios. I visited one Saturday morning and was so fascinated by the intricate work done by production designer Sarah Greenwood, set decorator Katie Spencer and their teams that I hung about for most of the day.

Eric Fellner, who produced the Oscar-nominated film with Tim Bevan, Douglas Urbanski, lisa Bruce and anthony McCarten, told me he stored the set for nine months, but couldn’t find a home for it. He approached The Crown, hoping the Netflix drama could use it, but the show was moving into a late-Fifties, early-Sixties period and the wartime chamber would have been out of date.

‘It’s such a sad conversation, because I felt deep down we should have put it somewhere permanently,’ Fellner said.