This list is not intended to be comprehensive. But it is designed to represent some of the existing research on London’s silent cinemas, and to offer starting points for further research.
History of London
Early cinema
Electric theatres
World War I
The 1920s
The coming of sound
Local studies and histories of individual cinemas in London
General histories of cinema exhibition in Britain
Useful websites
History of London
Richard Dennis, ‘Modern London’, in Martin Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 95-132.
Patricia L. Garside, ‘West End, East End: London, 1890-1940’, in Anthony Sutcliffe (ed.), Metropolis 1840-1940 (London: Mansell, 1984), pp. 221-58.
P.L. Garside, ‘London and the Home Counties’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 471-540.
Alan A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport, 1900-1939, second edition (Didcot: Wild Swan, 1991).
Cathy Ross, Twenties London: A City in the Jazz Age (London: Museum of London/Wilson, 2003).
Gavin Weightmam and Steve Humphries, The Making of Modern London, 1914-1939 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984).
Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (London: Viking, 2001).
Jerry White, Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 2014).
Early cinema
John Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1976).
Ian Christie, ‘Screening the City: A Sketch for the Long History of London Screen Entertainment’ (2010), essay available on the
author’s website.
Tony Fletcher, ‘The London County Council and the Cinematograph, 1896-1900’, Living Pictures: The Journal of the Popular and Projected Image Before 1914, 1:2 (2001), 69-83.
Tony Fletcher, ‘A Tapestry of Celluloid, 1900-1906’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 4:2 (2006), 175-221.
Tony Fletcher, A Kinematographic Journey through London 1907-8 (London: Local History Publications, 2013)
Joost Hunningher, ‘Première on Regent Street’, in Christopher Williams (ed.), Cinema: The Beginnings and the Future (London: University of Westminster Press, 1996), pp. 41-54.
Rachael Low and Roger Manvell, The History of the British Film, 1896-1906 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948).
Luke McKernan, ‘The Familiarity of the New: The Emergence of a Motion Picture Industry in Late Nineteenth-Century London’, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 33:2 (2006), 30-44.
Vanessa Toulmin, ‘Telling the Tale: The Story of the Fairground Bioscope Shows and the Showmen Who Operated Them’, Film History, 6:2 (1994), 219-37.
Electric theatres
Jon Burrows, ‘Penny Pleasures: Film Exhibition in London during the Nickelodeon Era, 1906-1914’, Film History, 16:1 (2004), 60-91.
Jon Burrows, ‘Penny Pleasures II: Indecency, Anarchy and Junk Film in London’s “Nickelodeons”’, Film History, 16:2 (2004), 172-97.
Jon Burrows, ‘The Art of Not “Playing to Pictures” in British Cinemas, 1906-1914’, in Julie Brown and Annette Davison (eds), The Sounds of the Silents in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 111-25.
Christian Hayes, ‘Phantom Carriages: Reconstructing Hale’s Tours and the Virtual Train Experience’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 7:2 (2009), 185-98.
Nicholas Hiley, ‘“Nothing More than a Craze”: Cinema Building in Britain from 1909 to 1914’, in Andrew Higson (ed.), Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896-1930 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 111-27.
Rachael Low, The History of the British Film, 1906-1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949).
Luke McKernan, ‘Unequal Pleasures: Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd. and the Early Film Exhibition Business in London’, paper given at the Emergence of the Film Industry in Britain conference, University of Reading Business School (2006), available on author’s website.
Luke McKernan, ‘“Only the Screen Was Silent…”: Memories of Children’s Cinema-going in London before the First World War’, Film Studies, 10 (2007), 1-20.
Luke McKernan, ‘“A Fury for Seeing: Cinema, Audience and Leisure in London in 1913’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 6:3 (2008), 271-80.
World War I
Pierluigi Ercole, ‘“Little Italy on the Brink”: The Italian Diaspora and the Distribution of War Films in London, 1914-18’, in Daniel Biltereyst, Richard Maltby and Philippe Meers (eds), Cinema, Audiences and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History (London: Routledge, 2012), pp.154-65.
Nicholas Hiley, ‘The British Cinema Auditorium’, in Karel Dibbets and Bert Hogenkamp (eds), Film and the First World War (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), pp. 160-70.
Rachael Low, The History of the British Film, 1914-1918 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1950).
Paul Moody, ‘“Improper Practices” in Great War British Cinemas’, in Michael Hammond and Michael Williams (eds), British Silent Cinema and the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 49-63.
Chris O’Rourke, ‘“Afterwards to See a Cinema Show”: The Diary of a London Cinema-goer in 1915’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 13:1 (2015), 66-82.
Alex Rock, ‘The “Khaki Fever” Moral Panic: Women’s Patrols and the Policing of Cinemas in London, 1913-19’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 12:1 (2014), 57-72.
The 1920s
Julie Brown, ‘Framing the Atmospheric Film Prologue in Britain, 1919-1926’, in Julie Brown and Annette Davison (eds), The Sounds of the Silents in Britain (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2013), pp. 200-21.
Olly Gruner, ‘“Good Business, Good Policy, Good Patriotism”: The British Film Weeks of 1924’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 32:1 (2012), 41-56.
Rachael Low, The History of the British Film, 1918-1929 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971).
Robert Murphy, ‘Fantasy Worlds: British Cinema between the Wars’, Screen, 26:1 (1985), 10-20.
Jen Samson, ‘The Film Society, 1925-1939’, in Charles Barr (ed.), All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1986), pp. 306-13.
Gil Toffell, ‘“Come See, and Hear, the Mother Tongue!” Yiddish Cinema in Interwar London’, Screen, 50:3 (2009), 277-98.
Vivian Van Damm, Tonight and Every Night (London: Paul, 1952).
The coming of sound
Robert Murphy, ‘The Coming of Sound to the Cinema in Britain’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 4:2 (1984), 143-60.
Local studies and histories of individual cinemas in London
Mark Aston, The Cinemas of Camden (London: London Borough of Camden, 1997).
Jeremy Buck, Cinemas of Haringey (London: Hornsey Historical Society, 2010).
Chris Draper, Islington’s Cinemas and Film Studios (London: London Borough of Islington, 1991).
Pierluigi Ercole, ‘Migrant People, Moving Images: Italian Immigration, London’s Little Italy and the Role of Cinema in the Early Twentieth Century’, in Monica Boria and Linda Risso (eds), Laboratorio di Nuova Recerca: Investigating Gender, Translation and Culture in Italian Studies (Leicester: Troubadour, 2007), pp. 21-31.
Pierluigi Ercole, ‘Ethnic Audiences and Film Culture: Italian Immigrants, Cultural Identity, and the Distribution of Italian Films in London at the Beginning of the 20th Century’, unpublished PhD thesis (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2008).
Allen Eyles with Keith Skone, London’s West End Cinemas, third edition (Swindon: English Heritage, 2014).
Allen Eyles and Keith Skone, The Cinemas of Croydon (Sutton: Keytone Publications in association with Croydon Public Libraries, 1989).
Ken George, ‘Two Sixpennies Please’: Lewisham’s Early Cinemas (London: Author, 1987).
Bob Grimwood, The Cinemas of Essex (Wakefield: Mercia Cinema Society, 1995).
Patrick Loobey, Cinemas and Theatres of Wandsworth and Battersea (Stroud: Tempus, 2004).
Gavin McGrath, Cinemas and Theatres of Hackney (London: Author, 2009).
Margaret O’Brien and Allen Eyles, Enter the Dream-House: Memories of Cinemas in South London from the Twenties to the Sixties (London: Museum of the Moving Image, 1993).
Elizabeth Owen, ‘The Rio Centre (Dalston) Ltd: The Only Cinema in Hackney’, unpublished thesis, 1985, Hackney Archives.
Elaine Penn (ed.), The Magic Screen: A History of Regent Street Cinema (London: University of Westminster, 2015).
Gerry Turvey, The Phoenix Cinema: A Century of Film in East Finchley (London: Phoenix Cinema Trust, 2010).
Cliff Wadsworth, Cinemas and Theatres of Willesden (London: Willesden Local History Society, 2000).
Gary Wharton, Suburban London Cinemas (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2008.
Fred T.P. Windsor, The Dream Palaces of Richmond Upon Thames (Birmingham: Mercia Cinema Society, 1985).
General histories of cinema exhibition in Britain
Audrey Field, Picture Palace: A Social History of the Cinema (London: Gentry Books, 1974)
Richard Gray, Cinemas in Britain: One Hundred Years of Cinema Architecture (London: Lund Humphries/Cinema Theatre Association, 1996).
Stuart Hanson, From Silent Screen to Multi-Screen: A History of Cinema-going in Britain since 1896 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).
Useful websites
Cinema Theatre Association (CTA) www.cinema-theatre.org.uk
A membership group dedicated to studying historic cinemas in Britain. Includes details of CTA publications.
Cinema Treasures www.cinematreasures.org
An online guide to cinema buildings across the world.
Early cinema in Scotland earlycinema.gla.ac.uk
The website of the Early Cinema in Scotland, 1896-1927, research project funded by the AHRC and based at the University of Glasgow in partnership with the University of Edinburgh.
The History of the Cinema Usherette cinemausherettes.com
A project dedicated to the history of cinema usherettes, particularly from the 1920s to the 1950s, based at the University of Portsmouth.
HoMER Network www.homernetwork.org
The online home of the History of Movie-going, Exhibition and Reception (HoMER) Project, a scholarly research network.
Islington’s Lost Cinemas www.islingtonslostcinemas.com
An art and cultural history project about cinemas in the London Borough of Islington.
The London Project www.londonfilm.bbk.ac.uk
The website of a major AHRC-funded research project undertaken at Birkbeck College, University of London (2004-2005). Includes a searchable database of cinemas and film businesses in London, 1894-1914.
Media History Digital Library www.mediahistoryproject.org
An online library of documents relating to the histories of cinema, radio and television. Material dealing with London cinemas before 1930 includes issues of the film trade magazines The Cinema News and Property Gazette and The Weekly Kinema Guide (for London and suburban cinemas), as well as editions of the Kinematograph Year Book.
Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema www.victorian-cinema.net
A guide to leading figures in Victorian cinema, including early film showmen.
