Bradford's National Media Museum has recorded its highest number of visitors in a 12-month period for the past five years.

The museum has welcomed almost three-quarters of a million visitors in the past financial year, an increase of nine per cent on the previous year and 20 per cent on the year before.

More than 737,000 visited the attraction which over the past year has seen visits by high-profile guests like Michael Palin, Kenneth Branagh, Alan Bennett and Barry Norman.

Yorkshire's only IMAX screen continued to attract high numbers to see the 3D ending to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and new innovations.

The museum was the only UK venue for the exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson's Scrapbook, Photographs 1932-46, previously only exhibited in Paris and New York.

The news comes as the museum prepares to celebrate 25 years on its Bradford site with a variety of events in 2008.

Colin Philpott, the museum's director, said: "This year has been a bumper year with a number of stars of television and film visiting the Museum, further world-class photography exhibitions on show and our ever-popular galleries and events drawing in families."