It’s the 75th anniversary year for the Royal Festival Hall, the brutalist auditorium at the centre of the Southbank Centre built on a curve of River Thames to mark the Festival of Britain, a five-month “tonic for the nation” designed to cheer a weary population still reeling from the Second World War. As Prime Minister Clement Attlee said when he laid the foundation stone, transforming the area from a boggy and mostly neglected collection of industrial buildings and wharfs in stark contrast to the prosperity across the river, the building was designed to “show that we are not just a nation of shopkeepers, but a people who appreciate and practise the arts”.
Londoners who “appreciate the arts” have headed south of the river to this prime piece of Zone 1 action, stretching from County Hall towards Borough ever since. In the days before dating apps, the South Bank was the number one location for a Guardian Soulmates first date and its status as a cultural whirlwind-cum-riverside promenade has outlasted the online matchmaker.
