ONE of the North East’s most iconic landmarks has been chosen to promote a play in London’s West End – but not quite as we know it.

An image of Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland has been used in the campaign to promote stage play The Lion in Winter starring acclaimed actors Joanna Lumley and Robert Lindsay.

The promotion campaign is currently being rolled out in the national press and at sites across London but the image of the castle has been “flipped” so that left is right, and vice versa.

Castle director Chris Calvert first saw the advert in a national newspaper.

He said: “We all looked at the castle and said that’s Bamburgh, but they have Photoshopped it so what’s on the left is on the right and what’s on the right is on the left.

“It had a lot of people confused because they could see it was here but then it wasn’t quite right. A lot of people in the village have phoned up about it.”

Far from being angry, Chris is trying to track down a poster of the play, which is part of Sir Trevor Nunn’s season at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.

He believes the castle’s inclusion in the campaign can only be of benefit to the attraction.

“To have an association with Robert Lindsay, Joanna Lumley and Trevor Nunn, as he’s directing, is great.”

Lindsay plays an ageing Henry II in The Lion in Winter, which runs from November 4 to January 28, 2012. Written by James Goldman, it portrays a family at war over the festive season.

In the play, Henry invites his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitane and his three sons, Richard, Geoffrey and John, to spend Christmas with him, his mistress Princess Alais and her brother, the young King Philip of France.

As everyone waits to see who Henry will name as his successor to the crown of England, the yuletide celebrations instead turn into a combat zone of deceit, betrayal, bitter power games and scabrous wit.

Sir Trevor Nunn said: “I am excited to be directing the London premiere of a famous play about a power struggle full of sexual politics and political sex, with two such brilliant actors as Robert Lindsay and Joanna Lumley.”