Globe vies for 'amazing' awards

The replica Globe was opened in 1996

London's historic Globe Theatre is in the running to be named the country's foremost "amazing space".

The awards, to be announced on Friday, are for Britain's favourite lottery-funded public spaces.

The Globe's chief executive Peter Kyle told BBC London: "The fact the Globe is here at all is fairly amazing - it's down to the dream of one man."

It is in competition with Belfast's Divis and the Black Mountain and Scotland's Ice Factor.

The replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is built on the site of the original 16th-Century building.

The winner of the awards will be announced at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Decades' work

Mr Kyle said: "In playing terms it gives a fantastic immediacy of rapport."

Mr Kyle said US actor and director Sam Wannamaker had worked for decades to make the theatre a reality.

He said the US director had come over to the UK in the 1940s - acting in a production of Shakespeare's Othello - and had become obsessed with finding the site of the original theatre.

Mr Kyle said Wannamaker's Globe Theatre project had to overcome many obstacles - many people were opposed to it because they thought it would be "elitist" or "not relevant".

"He spent the next 40 years of his life convincing people that wasn't true."

The Globe, which opened in 1996, was built over three years using techniques believed to have been used on the original building, Mr Kyle said.