Abbey Road Given Listed Building Status

Abbey Road Studios continues to bask in the media sunspot: a week ago it was up for sale, then EMI said that it wasn't, and now the Government has moved quickly to award it Grade II listed status. Culture minister Margaret Hodge, acting on the advice of English Heritage, rubber-stamped the new, protected status, saying that it was wholly down to the building's "historic merit", and paid testament to the music recorded there as the "the thread that follows us through all our lives". Aside from the Beatles, other artists to record at the studio through the years include Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Shirley Bassey, and Michael Jackson; Gordon Brown will be dismayed to learn that his favourite group, Arctic Monkeys, are yet to cut a track on those hallowed amps.