The Nottingham Express offices on Parliament Street were built by Nottingham architect Watson Fothergill – the man behind many of Nottingham’s distinctive Victorian buildings. The original building was completed in 1876 and had three floors. The building was extended in 1899 towards King Street and a fourth floor added.

The Nottingham Express was a Liberal newspaper published between 1860 and 1918, and the three heads carved above the ornate doorway are Liberal statesmen Richard Cobden, William Gladstone and John Bright. Inside the entrance are two rows of tiles that depict Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Lord Palmerston and John Russell. The paper continued as The Nottingham Journal and Express until 1953.

The writer Graham Greene worked in the building as a sub-editor on The Journal from November 1925-March 1926 before joining The Times in London. Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels and of thrillers. His novels included Brighton Rock, The Third Man, The Quiet American, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair and Our Man in Havana. He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author of Peter Pan, JM Barrie, was also a journalist on the Nottingham Daily Journal.

The decoration of the interior of Express Studios pays tribute to Graham Greene and the art deco era.