The Bank of England cut interest rates today to just 2% - the lowest for 57 years and the joint lowest in history. So what was life like in 1951? We take a look back at the cultural events of that year
New Year's Day, 1951: Audrey Hepburn looks up at billboards in the middle of Times Square, New York. She had recently been in town for the run of the Broadway show GigiPhotograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Image1951 was also the year that rock'n' roll hit the mainstream. Cleveland DJ Alan Freed (centre) is often credited with inventing the term - ostensibly to avoid the racially loaded connotations of rhythm and blues - and was later blamed for riots caused by the music in BostonPhotograph: CorbisJoseph L Mankiewicz's All About Eve, starring Bette Davis as an aging Broadway star beseiged by a vindictive fan, won best picture at the Oscars in March after being nominated for a record 14 awards. The film also boasts an early screen appearance by Marilyn MonroePhotograph: Allstar/Cinetext/20 Century FoxBritish audiences were treated to Ealing comedy classic The Lavender Hill Mob, released in September. Alec Guinness starred as a timorous bank clerk who finds himself persuaded to smuggle gold bullion, Sid James (left) as one of his underworld accomplicesPhotograph: Kobal CollectionClockwise from top left, Anthony Blunt, Donald Duart Maclean, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess. All were members of the so-called Cambridge Five, who passed information from British intelligence to the Soviet Union. Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow in JunePhotograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAnother of 1951's big films, released in September, was A Streetcar Named Desire, based on Tennessee Williams's play and starring Marlon Brando and Vivien LeighPhotograph: Ronald Grant ArchiveA camera focuses on television host Arthur Godfrey during an hour-long colour television programme broadcast from New York. 1951 was the first time anyone had seen colour TVPhotograph: Ray Howard/APEva Perón gives an election speech at a mass labour meeting in Buenos Aires. In August Perón announces her candidacy for vice-president but the military objects, later launching a failed coupPhotograph: Bettmann/CorbisBack at home, the biggest cultural event of the year was the Festival of Britain, designed as a showcase for leading-edge British architecture and design. It opened to the public in May. Thousands of visitors trooped to London's South Bank, transformed from a rubble-strewn wasteland to a vision of the futurePhotograph: Davis/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAnother architectural highlight of the year was the opening of the sleekly modernist United Nations Secretariat building in New York, designed by Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and othersPhotograph: APSinger Tony Bennett is hounded by autograph-hunters as he leaves a performance in 1951. Bennett's single Because of You raced up the charts in the autumnPhotograph: APWinston Churchill gives the famous 'V for victory' sign after hearing the results of a poll returning him as MP in October's general election. Out of power since 1945, Churchill is about to turn 77; he would soldier on until 80Photograph: J A Hampton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images