How ‘Night and Day’ brings Virginia Woolf’s world to life through northern England’s historic architecture

On Location peels back the curtain on some of your favourite films, television shows, and more. This time, we take a look at Night and Day.

One of the strange revelations of reading authors like Jane Austin or Virginia Woolf is realising lots of our cultural templates around love and meet-cutes originate much earlier than we realise. On that note, Night & Day, Woolf’s 1919 novel, has been reimagined in a new film with a star-studded cast, but the premise sounds a lot like a contemporary rom-com.

Known as Woolf’s funniest novel, Night and Day is an “unromantic comedy” turned into a 2026 film by BAFTA-nominated director Tina Gharavi. The story follows Katharine Hilbery (played by Haley Bennett), a young woman who is extremely passionate about astronomy and subsequently does everything she can to avoid love and marriage.

In 2026, that life path is still challenging to many rigid societal expectations around women, but back in Edwardian England, against the backdrop of advancing science and technology and an even stronger patriarchy, this would have been seen as an abomination.

Lily Allen plays feisty suffragette Mary Datchet; Jack Whitehall is William Rodney, Katharine’s childhood friend; Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders play her parents, and Cyril, her cousin, is played by Misia Butler. The film hits UK cinemas on 19 June.

But it’s the film’s locations that captured the Condé Nast Traveller team’s attention. Although it’s set in 1910 London, shooting predominantly took place in North East England. Here we take a closer look…

The Lecture Theatre in The Common Room, Newcastle

This historic space is located in the restored Neville Hall. The Common Room’s Lecture Theatre features Edwardian wood-panelled space and was originally designed by Cackett and Burns Dick.

These days, it’s used to “bring people together and champion research and innovation in the North East and beyond”, according to its site. It hosts events including Q&A’s, panel talks and screenings.

But Gharavi, a local who has lived on and off in Tyneside for more than 30 years and is a full-time lecturer, knew the space was perfect for her Edwardian retelling. She told Living North, “It’s so striking. It’s circular, wooden, and exactly as a room like that would’ve been in 1910. Not much has changed. Some of the walls have been painted what I call a ‘ghastly’ modern white now, but luckily we got to repaint those for the movie.”