King's Library Tower at the British Library

I previously blogged about the King's Library at the British Library. My pics are now uploaded and ready for viewing on the set page.

The set page also has photographs of St Pancras and Kings Cross stations, which are located right next to the British Library. The stations are one of London's major transit centres, with a sprawling underground tube station linking many lines. St Pancras being renovated to become London's new Eurostar terminus.

Liverpool Street Station

What is better than setting out to find a film location? Surely, it's the surprise realisation that a familiar place has featured in a favourite film.

Such is the case with Liverpool Street Station. The Underground station is buried in the bowels of the mainline terminus used by Essex-bound trains, requiring one to walk through the concourse to access the tube. The concourse is impressive, with an airy vaulted ceiling, a distinctive arrival/departure board, and the little mezzanine mall of glass-roofed shops.

I pass through the station quite regularly, averaging once per week in my first three months in London. From the first visit it seemed familiar, although I could not think why. Successive visits fostered this niggling sense of familiarity, until a search on IMDb solved the mystery. Liverpool Street Station appears in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible. It's the location for a meeting between spy master Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and disavowed agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), where the latter discovers that seeing is not necessarily believing.