Around the World with Orson Welles — Season 1, Episode 5: London: The Queen's Pensioners
Documentary • 26 min • 1 season, 7 episodes • ★ 7.1/10
Episode synopsis
Welles travels to London to visit an alms house in Hackney for indigent widows created in the 1600s and an old soldier's Chelsea home.
About Around the World with Orson Welles
A six-part British television travel series written, directed, and presented by Orson Welles for ITV in 1955. Filmed entirely in Europe, the series follows Welles through Vienna, the Basque Country, Madrid, Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and London’s Chelsea Pensioners, blending travelogue, cultural portraiture, and personal essay. Moving between documentary observation and reflective commentary, the episodes combine interviews, local history, and Welles’s distinctive narration into a series that functions as both travel film and cinematic essay.