In the summer of 1951, Londoners still living among the ruins of wartime bombing were dazzled by the opening of the Festival of Britain on the capital’s South Bank. For a city in which food and other supplies had been rationed for more than a decade, the festival was a glimpse into the future and a symbol of postwar optimism. 

More than eight million visitors, half of them from outside London, flocked to see the site’s daringly modern structures, from Skylon, a 90m-high tube of steel which appeared to float in the air, to the Royal Festival Hall, which still stands and is now grade I-listed. 

Most impressive of all was the Dome of Discovery, an exhibition hall with a 111m-wide dome, at the time the largest in the world. It was controversially demolished after the summer and sold for scrap.

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