AIL meets Jim Carter

London as a tourist
I would love to be able to look at London through the eyes of a foreign tourists, through the eyes of someone who hasn’t seen it before because I think living here we might get a bit blasé about it but actually were spoilt for choice, fantastic museums, probably the best theatres in the world, great cinemas plus you have got parks where you can rest in between.

This coming autumn in London
Well this autumn there's so much to see it’s hard to pick anything out really, for me I shall certainly be going to the royal academy to capture the end of Joseph Cornell exhibition, I would tell people to go along the Strand and see Gypsy with Imelda Staunton in it, I declare a slight interest there I’ve been married to Imelda Staunton for 31 years.

West End shows
It would hardly seem fair to wax lyrical about our award winning west end theatre when we do have the finest actors to choose from.

Top tips for London
The elite thing about London is it’s all so close and assessable, you can walk around it all and can do it very quickly, go on the London Eye get to the top of it get an overall view of the city, see where you are going, walk along the Southbank there's the festival Hall, the A wood gallery, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the national theatre, you can’t go wrong really. It sort of doesn’t matter really you go into the national gallery here, the Tate modern, the Tate Britain, don’t spend 4 hours in there you will get exhausted, go in for an hour see what you want to see and then hit the coffee bar or buy something in the shop you will have a great time.

Downton Abbey
Downtown Abbey is coming to an end of series 6, the national outbreak of mourning, for me maybe it’s the right time to come to an end and new challenges, I'm going to do a documentary, I'm going be doing a documentary on Lonnie Donegan the king of Skiffle.

Cultural highlights
If I was to pick one thing from the Autumn season of culture that’s a tricky choice I think I love the wildlife photographer of the year competition at the natural history museum, you’ll see things there, you see pictures in magazines and on the TV but to see some of these stunning photographs I think I would make a beeline for that.


Check out a video of the interview here:
Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter reveals his cultural guide to London