The fading charms of Britain’s historic cinemas

For clevedon, North Somerset, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is intertwined with an altogether happier event. Five days after the passenger liner went down in the north Atlantic, one of the world’s first “picture houses” opened in the seaside town with a matinée to raise cash for survivors. Aside from several months’ closure during the pandemic the Curzon, as it is now known, has been showing films ever since. Of the more than 1,500 cinemas that were built in Britain during the first four decades of the 20th century, it is one of only a handful still running.