TIMELINES OF HISTORY

Timeline Great Britain 1911-1941

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1911 Jan 17, Francis Galton (b.1822), English scientist, died. He was one of the first moderns to present a carefully considered eugenics program. His work included the invention of weather maps and the description of fingerprints. He also developed a system for classifying human profiles using geometric diagrams. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin and the founder of the science of statistics. The idea of sterilizing human beings considered as physical or mental undesirables stemmed from Galton’s ideas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton)(NH, 6/97, p.18)(SFC, 8/28/97, p.A12)

1911 Apr 12, Pierre Prier completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.
(HN, 4/12/99)

1911 May 8, England signed a treaty with China making opium the main trading commodity with the Chinese.
(SMTS, 10/1/86, p.4)

1911 Mar 9, The funding for five new battleships was added to the British military defense budget.
(HN, 3/9/98)

1911 May 16, Remains of a Neanderthal man were found in Jersey, UK.
(MC, 5/16/02)

1911 May 29, William Schwenck Gilbert (74), writer (Gilbert & Sullivan), died.
(SC, 5/29/02)

1911 Jun 22, King George V of England crowned at Westminster Abbey.
(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.40)(HN, 6/22/98)

1911 Jul 14, Terry Thomas, actor (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), was born in England.
(MC, 7/14/02)

1911 Jul 20, Generals Henry Wilson and Auguste Dubail signed a plan for British Expeditionary army in case of war with Germany.
(MC, 7/20/02)

1911 Aug 18, Britain’s Parliament Act of 1911 was given Royal Assent. It asserted the supremacy of the House of Commons by limiting the legislation-blocking powers of the House of Lords (the suspensory veto).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Acts_1911_and_1949)(Econ, 3/3/12, p.68)

1911 Sep 9, An airmail route opened between London and Windsor.
(HN, 9/9/98)

1911 Oct 4, The 1st public elevator began service at London's Earl's Court Metro Station.
(MC, 10/4/01)

1911 Nov 21, Suffragettes stormed Parliament in London. All were arrested and all chose prison terms.
(HN, 11/21/98)

1911 Dec 10, Joseph Dalton Hooker (b.1817), British botonist and explorer, died.
(WSJ, 5/10/08, p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dalton_Hooker)

1911 Dec 12, In northern India Britain’s King George V stood before some 562 princes as well as maharajahs, soldiers and bureaucrats, and made a surprise announcement that would change the fate of Delhi, an ancient fading city with a population of 410,000. The king said Delhi would be the new capital of India.
(AP, 12/11/11)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.68)

1911 King George V of Britain visited India. He went hunting in Nepal and from the back of an elephant bagged 21 tigers, 8 rhinos, and a bear.
(NG, 12/97, p.138)
1911 The first Michelin guide to the British Isles was published to help travelers and included information on how to change a tire.
(AFP, 1/18/11)

1912 Jan 1, Kim Philby was born in India. He became a ringleader of a group of upper crust Englishmen who entered public service or, in many cases, the British Secret Service, then spied for the Soviets. Philby got away and spent his last years in Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby)

1912 Jan 16, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote in his diary after reaching the South Pole on January 16, 1912, "Great God this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority." Robert Scott, attempting to lead the first exploration party to the South Pole, wrote the passage after finding the black flag of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Thoroughly demoralized, the five members of the Scott party died during their 800-mile trek back to their base camp. [see Jan 18]
(HNQ, 7/22/98)

1912 Jan 18, The expedition of British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott intended to be the first to reach the South Pole, but when they arrived they found a letter from Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had been there over a month earlier. Scott and his group had set out from a camp in Antarctica 81 days earlier, and on their way back, their supplies ran out. Scott wrote in a diary during the trek, which a search party discovered with the team's frozen bodies in November. Part of Scott's March 29 entry reads, "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far." The team had made it to within 11 miles of the camp. Scott's diary ended with, "Last Entry: For God's sake look after our people." [see Jan 16]
(AP, 1/18/98)(HNPD, 1/18/99)

1912 Jan 30, The British House of Lords opposed the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.
(HN, 1/30/99)

1912 Feb 26, Coal miners struck in England. They settled on 03/01.
(SC, 2/26/02)

1912 Mar 27, James Callaghan (d.2005), British prime minister (1976-1979), was born in Portsmouth, England.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.A21)

1912 Mar 29, Capt. Robert F. Scott, British pole explorer, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, made a last entry in his diary: "the end cannot be far."
(MC, 3/29/02)

1912 Apr 2, Titanic underwent sea trials under its own power.
(MC, 4/2/02)

1912 Apr 10, The 66,000 ton RMS Titanic left port from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage with 2,223 people.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.16)(SFEC, 12/8/96, BR p.6)(AP, 4/10/97)

1912 Apr 13, Royal Flying Corps formed (later RAF).
(MC, 4/13/02)

1912 Apr 15, At 2:20 a.m., two hours and 40 minutes after impact, the luxury liner RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland with the loss of about 1,522 lives. About 1,500 [1517] people died. Because there were lifeboats for only half those on board, only 705 passengers and crew survived the disaster. Among the survivors was J. Bruce Ismay, president of the White Star Line, who telegraphed his New York office, "Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision with iceberg, resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later." Nearly a third of the passengers died. The ship’s band played the waltz “Songe d’Automne” as it sank. The accident killed 1,523 [1503] people and 705 survived. By 1996 only 8 were still alive. Nearly 60% of the first-class passengers survived. There were 214 staff members of the 685 survivors. It was later discovered that Harland & Wolff, the ship’s builder, had used a lower quality rivet on the ship that likely contributed to the rapid sinking. The last night on the ship was described by Rick Archbold and Dana McCauley in their book: “Last Dinner on the Titanic.” The steamer Carpathia rescued 705 of the 2,358 people onboard. Prof. Steven Biel of Brandeis Univ. wrote “A Cultural History of the Titanic” in 1997.
(AP, 4/15/97)(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.16)(SFC, 9/22/96, Par p.25)(WSJ, 4/9/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/14/97, p.E8)(SFC, 4/19/97, p.A3)(SFEC,12/797, DB p.37)(SFC, 4/15/08, p.A6)

1912 Apr 28, Odette Hallowes, British secret agent in France, was born. She was later captured and tortured by the Gestapo.
(HN, 4/28/99)

1912 May 13, The Royal Flying Corps was established in England. It was the predecessor of the Royal Air Force.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/99)

1912 Jun 23, Alan M. Turing (d.1954), English mathematician and pioneer of computer theory, was born. He cracked the Enigma code in World War II that was used by the Germans to communicate with their submarines. A play by Hugh Whitemore titled "Breaking the Code," tells his story. It was shown as a TV film on Masterpiece Theater in 1997.
(V.D.-H.K.p.349)(SFC, 1/31/97, p.D3)(HN, 6/23/01)

1912 Jul 15, British National Health Insurance Act went into effect.
(MC, 7/15/02)

1912 Aug 10, Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), English man of letters, married writer Virginia Duckworth (b.1882). Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941.
(WSJ, 12/17/05, p.P13)(www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/)

1912 Aug 20, William Booth, English minister, founder (Salvation Army), died.
(MC, 8/20/02)

1912 Sep 1, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (b.1875), Afro-British composer, died.
(http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/Song.html#16)

1912 Sep 3, World's 1st cannery opened in England to supply food to the navy.
(MC, 9/3/01)

1912 Dec 18, In the famous Piltdown Man Forgery amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced the discovery of two skulls from the Piltdown Quarry in Sussex, England. They appeared to belong to a primitive hominid and ancestor of man. Also found was a canine tooth, a tool carved from an elephant's tusk, and fossil teeth from a number of prehistoric animals. Dawson enlisted the help of vertebrate paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward. They christened it Eoanthropus dawsoni and on this day they announced their find to the Geological Society of London. A 1996 book "Unraveling Piltdown" by John Evangelist Walsh labeled Dawson as the perpetrator of the hoax. The missing link was later determined to be only 600 years old. The fossils had been doctored to look and test to be older. In 2012 Miles Russell authored “The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed.” [see 1908, 1913, 1953, 1955 & 1983]
(PacDisc, Spring ‘96, p.15)(SFEC, 9/22/96, BR p.9)(SSFC, 12/16/12, p.A23)

1912 The British Royal Navy E-class submarine entered service.
(SSFC, 1/2/05, p.E3)

1913 Jan 28, Pleasance Pendred, an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), was arrested for taking part in a window breaking campaign mainly targeting government offices around Westminster. Her pamphlet “Why Women Teachers Break Windows” was first published circa 1912 by the Woman’s Press. The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) had recently declared all out war against public and private property in the United Kingdom. An orgy of vandalism followed.
(http://suffragettes.nls.uk/media/28977/project_1_4_1.pdf)(ON, 10/2010, p.8)

1913 Jan 31, The British House of Lords rejected a bill tabled by the Liberal government and passed by the House of Commons on January 16 proposing home rule for Ireland. One peer said that home rule would make the Irish "a menace in war and a disturbing influence in peace."
(HC, 2003, p.64)

1913 Apr 3, British suffragette Emily Pankhurst was sentenced to 3 years in jail. She protested with hunger strikes and was released and re-arrested 9 times over a period of 18 months under the Temporary Discharge of Prisoners for Ill-Health Act.
(http://suffragettes.nls.uk/media/28977/project_1_4_1.pdf)(ON, 10/2010, p.8)

1913 Apr, The British Parliament passed the Temporary Discharge of Prisoners for Ill-Health Act. It made legal the hunger strikes that Suffragettes were undertaking at the time and stated that they would be released from prison as soon as they became ill.
(ON, 10/2010, p.8)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wcat.htm)

1913 May 6, Stewart Granger, [James Stewart], actor (Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche), was born in London.
(MC, 5/6/02)

1913 May 7, British House of Commons rejected women's right to vote.
(MC, 5/7/02)

1913 Jun 2, Barbara Pym (Mary Crampton), English novelist (Less Than Angels, Quartet in Autumn), was born.
(HN, 6/2/01)

1913 Jun 8, Emily Wilding Davison (b.1872), a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), died from injuries 4 days earlier when she tried to block the path of a racehorse owned by King George V. See link for video of race.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wdavison.htm)

1913 Jul 7, British House of Commons accepted Home-Rule Law.
(MC, 7/7/02)

1913 Jul 15, Hammond Innes, English novelist, was born.
(HN, 7/15/01)

1913 Sep 1, George Bernard Shaw’s "Androcles and the Lion," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/1/02)

1913 Oct 14, An explosion in a coal mine in Cardiff, Wales, killed 439.
(MC, 10/14/01)

1913 Oct 17, Zeppelin LII exploded over London, killing 28.
(HN, 10/17/98)

1913 Nov 22, Benjamin Britten (d.1976), English composer, pianist and conductor, was born.
(WSJ, 7/26/99, p.A21)(HN, 11//00)

1913 The British Parliament passed the Temporary Discharge of Prisoners for Ill-Health Act. It made legal the hunger strikes that Suffragettes were undertaking at the time and stated that they would be released from prison as soon as they became ill.
(ON, 10/2010, p.8)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wcat.htm)
1913 Arthur Bernstein, later named Sir Arthur Gilbert, was born in Golders Green, North London. His Gilbert Collection was donated to the Queen Mother in 2000 and installed at Somerset House.
(WSJ, 6/15/00, p.A24)
1913 London stopped published archives of the Old Bailey as newspapers began publishing details of court cases. By 2008 the archives, going back to 1694, were digitized and made available on line.
(Econ, 5/3/08, p.65)
1913 The British convoked a conference at Simla, India, to discuss the issue of Tibet's status. The conference was attended by representatives of the British Empire, the newly founded Republic of China, and the Tibetan government at Lhasa.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simla_Accord_%281914%29)

1914 Feb 25, John Tenniel (b.1820), English illustrator, died. He is best remembered for his illustrations in Lewis Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tenniel)

1914 Mar 1, H. Colijn, Dutch Minister of war, was named director of British Petroleum.
(SC, 3/1/02)

1914 Mar 10, Suffragettes in London damaged painter Rokeby's Venus of Velasquez.
(MC, 3/10/02)

1914 Apr 7, British House of Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.
(HN, 4/7/97)

1914 Apr 9, The 1st full color film: "World, Flesh & Devil" was shown in London.
(MC, 4/9/02)

1914 May 6, British House of Lords rejected women suffrage.
(MC, 5/6/02)

1914 May 25, British House of Commons passed Irish Home Rule.
(HN, 5/25/98)

1914 Jul 20, Armed resistance against British rule began in Ulster.
(MC, 7/20/02)

1914 Jul 27, British troops invaded the streets of Dublin, Ireland, and began to disarm Irish rebels.
(HN, 7/27/98)

1914 Aug 2, Great Britain mobilized.
(MC, 8/2/02)

1914 Aug 4, Britain and Belgium declared war after German troops entered Belgium. The United States proclaimed its neutrality.
(HNQ, 7/24/98)(AP, 8/4/97)

1914 Aug 5, The British Expeditionary Force mobilized for World War I.
(HN, 8/5/98)

1914 Aug 13, The British purchased 3 fast cross-channel packets: Empress, Riviera and Engadine. The ships were converted into seaplane tenders for reconnaissance.
(AH, 1/97)

1914 Aug 12, Great Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary.
(MC, 8/12/02)

1914 Aug 19, The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) landed in France.
(HN, 8/19/98)

1914 Aug 28, Three German cruisers were sunk by ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the first major naval battle of World War I. The Germans lost four ships and 1,000 sailors; British casualties were 33 killed.
(HN, 8/28/98)(RTH, 8/28/99)

1914 Aug, The British Flying Corps (RFC) was sent to France to support the British Expeditionary Corps.
(AH, 1/97)

1914 Aug, Sir Ernest Shackleton (40) left England on a voyage to Antarctica with a 27 man crew on the HMS Endurance. He planned to lead the "Imperial Trans-Continental Expedition," a dog-sled party across the continent.
(WSJ, 4/2/98, p.B15)(ON, 5/00, p.9)

1914 Sep 3, The air defense of Great Britain was assigned to Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Winston Churchill, the new first lord of the Admiralty, and the RNAS were assigned the task of stopping the Zeppelins.
(AH, 1/97)

1914 Sep 8, Pvt. Thomas Highgate (18) was the first British soldier in the war to be shot for desertion. He had become separated from his unit, but said he was trying to rejoin it when he was detained. In 2006 the British government prepared to pardon 305 men who were hauled before firing squads in World War I for desertion or cowardice after summary trials.
(AP, 8/16/06)

1914 Sep 18, The Irish Home Rule Bill became law, but was delayed until after World War I. The Government of Ireland Act became law. It was an act by the British government to take effect at the end of World War I.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-15)(HN, 9/18/98)

1914 Sep 20, Kenneth More, English actor (39 Steps, Doctor in the House), was born.
(MC, 9/20/01)

1914 Sep 22, The RNAS attempted their first air attack on the Zeppelins at Dusseldorf and Cologne. There was little damage done.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Sep 22, A German submarine sank 3 British ironclads, 1,459 died. The Aboukir, the Hogue, and the Cressy, were all sunk in just over one hour. This loss alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine, which had been generally unrecognized up to that time.
(MC, 9/22/01)

1914 Oct 4, The first German Zeppelin raided London.
(HN, 10/4/98)

1914 Oct 8, The RNAS attempted another air attack on the Zeppelins at Dusseldorf and Cologne. The dirigible shed at Dusseldorf was destroyed.
(AH, 1/97)

1914 Oct 27, Dylan Thomas, British poet and author whose works included "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog," was born in Swansea, Wales.
(AP, 10/27/97)(HN, 10/27/98)
1914 Oct 27, The British battleship Audacious was sunk by a mine.
(MC, 10/27/01)

1914 Oct 29, Retired Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher (73) accepted re-appointment as First Sea Lord.
(ON, 3/02, p.10)

1914 Oct 31, Great Britain and France declared war on Turkey. [see Nov 5]
(MC, 10/31/01)

1914 Nov 1, A German squadron engaged the British fleet under Adm. Craddock near Coronel Bay, Chile. The ships Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk and 1,600 men were lost including Adm. Craddock.
(MC, 11/1/01)(ON, 3/02, p.11)

1914 Nov 2, Great Britain annexed Cyprus.
(MC, 11/2/01)

1914 Nov 5, The French and British declared war on Turkey. [see Oct 31]
(HN, 11/5/98)

1914 Nov 21, The RNAS attempted an air attack on the Zeppelins at Friedrichshafen. They succeeded in doing considerable damage.
(AH, 1/97)

1914 Nov 26, Battleship HMS Bulwark exploded at Sheerness Harbor, England, 788 died.
(MC, 11/26/01)

1914 Dec 8, The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig were sunk by a British force under Adm. Sturdee in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. 1,800 German sailors were killed including Adm. Von Spee and his 2 sons. Over 2,500 lives were lost in a single day.
(HN, 12/8/98)(ON, 3/02, p.11)(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.C12)

1914 Dec 25, The British Royal Navy Air Force attempted to bomb the German Zeppelin shed at Cuxhaven. Fog obscured the mission and the bombs were dropped on other sites, i.e. a seaplane base on Langeoog Island, the light cruisers Stralsund and Graudenz and the city of Wilhemshaven. An audacious British air attack on a Zeppelin base in northern Germany caught the Germans with their defenses down.
(AH, 1/97)(HN, 3/22/97)

1914 The British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet moved to a new base in Scapa Flow, in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. They needed a safe place to take on a German Fleet based in the Baltic.
(www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/eastmainland/churchill/)
1914 An 840km stretch of frontier between China and India (Arunachal Pradesh state), in effect independent at this time, was settled by the governments of India and Tibet and named the McMahon Line after Sir Henry McMahon, creator of the border line. The conference in Simla placed Tawang inside the borders of India.
(Econ, 8/21/10, p.18)(Econ, 10/20/12, p.37)

1914-1918 The German campaign in East Africa was directed by General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. German looting and raiding caused at least 300,000 civilian deaths. By attacking Northern Rhodesia they invaded British territory. Of 1 million porters recruited by the British, 95,000 died. In 2007 Edward Paice authored “Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa. In 2008 Edward Paice authored “World War I: The African Front.
(Econ, 2/17/07, p.87)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)

1915 Jan 1, German submarine U-24 sank the British battleship Formidable in the English Channel whilst on patrol and exercise with the 5th Battle Squadron. She sank rapidly with the loss of 547 crew. The 5BS had been steaming slowly (10knots), not zigzagging and were without destroyer escort. Admiral in charge Lewis Bayly was dismissed from his position over the loss.
(www.worldwar1.co.uk/sunk15.htm)

1915 Jan 19, The first German air raids on Britain inflicted minor casualties. A Zeppelin attack over Great Britain killed 4 people.
(HN, 1/19/99)(MC, 1/19/02)

1915 Jan 24, The German cruiser Blücher was sunk by a British squadron in the Battle of Dogger Bank.
(HN, 1/24/99)

1915 Jan 31, German U-boats sank two British steamers in the English Channel.
(HN, 1/31/99)

1915 Feb 4, Germans decreed British waters part of war zone; all ships were to be sunk without warning.
(HN, 2/4/99)

1915 Feb 18, Germany began a blockade of England.
(MC, 2/18/02)

1915 Feb 19, British and French warships began their attacks on the Turkish forts at the mouth of the Dardenelles, in an abortive expedition to force the straits of Gallipoli. Winston Churchill was the architect of the disastrous campaign. Allied forces were evacuated at the end of the year after both sides had suffered appalling hardships and losses. In 2011 Peter Hart authored “Gallipoli.”
(HN, 2/19/99)(NW, 12/24/01, p.64)(Econ, 10/8/11, p.103)

1915 Feb 28, Peter Medawar, zoologist, immunologist (Nobel 1953), was born in England.
(MC, 2/28/02)

1915 Mar 2, British Vice Admiral Carden began bombing of Dardanelles forts.
(SC, 3/2/02)

1915 Mar 13, The Germans repelled a British Expeditionary Force attack at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in France.
(HN, 3/13/99)

1915 Mar 14, The British Navy sank the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
(HN, 3/14/98)

1915 Mar 16, British battle cruisers Inflexible and Irresistible hit mines in Dardanelle (Turkey).
(MC, 3/16/02)

1915 Apr 26, Second Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse became the first airman to win the Victoria Cross after conducting a successful bombing raid.
(HN, 4/26/99)

1915 May 5, German U-20 sank the Earl of Lathom.
(MC, 5/5/02)

1915 May 7, In the 2nd year of WWI, the British Cunard ocean liner Lusitania, on a voyage from New York to Liverpool, sank off the coast of Ireland in only 18-21 minutes after being struck by a torpedo fired by the German U-boat U-20. Of 1,959 [1,978] passengers and crew, 1,195 died. Of the fatalities, 123 were Americans. Even though the Germans maintained the liner was carrying arms purchased in America to Britain, the sinking of a passenger ship aroused intense anger against the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and hastened America's entrance into the war. In 2002 Diana Preston authored "Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy" and David Ramsay authored "Lusitania: Saga and Myth."
(CFA, '96, p.46)(AP, 5/7/97)(HN, 5/7/98)(HNPD, 5/7/99)(HN, 5/7/99)(WSJ, 5/8/02, p.AD9)

1915 May 10, A Zeppelin dropped hundreds of bombs on Southend-on-Sea.
(MC, 5/10/02)

1915 May 31, A German LZ-38 Zeppelin made an air raid on London. [see Jun 1]
(HN, 5/31/98)

1915 May, Adm. John Fisher (d.1920) resigned his position as First Sea Lord.
(ON, 3/02, p.11)

1915 Jun 1, Germany conducted the first zeppelin air raid over England. [see May 10, 31]
(DTnet, 6/1/97)(HN, 6/1/98)

1915 Jun 11, British troops took Cameroon in Africa.
(HN, 6/11/98)

1915 Jul 26, James Murray, lead compiler of the Oxford English Dictionary, died. The final entry to the dictionary was completed in 1928. In 2003 Simon Winchester authored “The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.”
(ON, 11/05, p.7)

1915 Aug 14, British transport Royal Edward was sunk a by German U boat and some 1000 people were killed.
(MC, 8/14/02)

1915 Aug 19, The British ocean liner Arabic was sunk by Germany. After the sinking Germany promised that no more merchant ships would be torpedoed without warning. Two Americans were aboard and Germany feared U.S. entry into World War I. Earlier, in May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania, killing 60 percent of those on board-some 1,198-of whom 128 were Americans. The threat of American intervention receded until the beleaguered Germans believed it was necessary to resume unrestricted submarine warfare to break the British blockade. On January 31, 1917, Berlin’s announcement that its submarines would "sink on sight" brought the United States into the war.
(HNQ, 4/7/99)

1915 Sep 9, A German zeppelin bombed London for the first time, causing little damage.
(HN, 9/9/98)

1915 Sep 21, Stonehenge was sold by auction for 6,600 pounds sterling ($11,500) to a Mr. Chubb, who bought it as a present for his wife. He presented it to the British nation three years later.
(HN, 9/21/98)

1915 Sep 25, An allied offensive was launched in France against the German Army.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1915 Sep 25, At the Battle at Loos: 8,246 British and 0 German casualties.
(MC, 9/25/01)

1915 Sep 28, At the Battle of Kut-el-Amara the British defeated the Turks in Mesopotamia.
(MC, 9/28/01)

1915 Oct 8, The WWI Battle of Loos ended with virtually no gains for either side. There was loss of over one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives in this battle. It marked the first use of poisonous gas by the British, which drifted back to the British trenches.
(MC, 10/8/01)

1915 Oct 12, British nurse Edith Cavell (47), despite international protests, was shot as a spy by a German firing squad in Brussels, Belgium. Cavell, the matron of a Brussels training school for nurses, was known for her compassion and sense of duty. As WWI broke out in Europe, Cavell helped 60 British student nurses return home but she remained in Belgium. Even though she knew that helping soldiers escape from German-occupied territory meant the death penalty, Cavell agreed when asked to participate in an escape ring that helped more than 200 fugitive Allied soldiers return home after the British Expeditionary Force's retreat from Mons. Such a large conspiracy could not long remain a secret and in August 1915, Cavell and 35 other members of her organization were arrested. At her hasty trial, she was condemned to death for "conducting soldiers to the enemy." Although their action may have been justified under the rules of war, the Germans seriously blundered when they shot Edith Cavell. Within days of her death, the selfless nurse was elevated to martyr status and the Germans were internationally condemned as "murdering monsters." A statue in St. Martin's Place, just off London's Trafalgar Square, is dedicated to Cavell. In 2010 Diana Souhami authored “Edith Cavell.”
(AP, 10/12/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.121)

1915 Oct 16, Great Britain declared war on Bulgaria.
(MC, 10/16/01)

1915 Nov 22, The Anglo-Indian army, led by British General Sir Charles Townshend, attacked a larger Turkish force under General Nur-ud-Din at Ctesiphon, Iraq, but was repulsed.
(HN, 11/22/98)

1915 Dec 31, The Germans torpedoed the British liner Persia without any warning; 335 are dead.
(HN, 12/31/98)

1915 In London, a Bow Street magistrate declared “The Rainbow”, a novel by D.H. Lawrence, to be obscene.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A2)

1915 A.G. Richardson and Co. Ltd. used Crown Ducal Ware as a trade name for its earthenware. The name was later acquired by Enoch Wedgewood & Co.
(SFC, 3/5/96, z-1 p.2)

1916 Jan 14, British authorities seized German attaché von Papen’s financial records confirming espionage activities in the U.S.
(HN, 1/14/99)

1916 Jan 30, Sir Clements Markham (b.1830), English explorer and geographer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clements_Markham)

1916 Feb 9, Conscription began in Great Britain as the Military Service Act becomes effective.
(HN, 2/9/99)

1916 Feb 28, Henry James (72), US-British writer (Bostonians), died in London.
(MC, 2/28/02)

1916 Mar 10, James Herriot (d.1995), Scottish writer and country veterinarian (All Creatures Great and Small), was born as James Alfred Wight, in Sunderland, England. [See Oct 3]
(HN, 3/10/01)

1916 Apr 20, German-British sea battle off Belgian coast.
(MC, 4/20/02)

1916 Apr 24, Some 1,600 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin, including the General Post Office. The rising was put down by British forces several days later. It was provoked by impatience with the lack of home rule. Michael Collins, a member of Sinn Fein, led guerrilla warfare.
(WSJ, 10/11/96, p.A8)(SFEC, 12/22/96, zone1 p.6)(AP, 4/24/97)

1916 Apr 28, The British declared martial law throughout Ireland.
(HN, 4/28/98)

1916 Apr 29, The Easter Rising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)

1916 May 3, Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.
(AP, 5/3/97)

1916 May 19, The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret understanding between the governments of Britain and France defining their respective spheres of post-World War I influence and control in the Middle East. The boundaries of this agreement still remains in much of the common border between Syria and Iraq. Britain and France carved up the Levant into an assortment of monarchies, mandates and emirates. The agreement enshrined Anglo-French imperialist ambitions at the end of WW II. Syria and Lebanon were put into the French orbit, while Britain claimed Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf states and the Palestinian Mandate. Sir Mark Sykes (d.1919 at age 39) and Francois Picot made the deal.
(WSJ, 2/27/00, p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement)

1916 May 31, During World War I, British and German fleets fought the Battle of Skagerrak at Jutland off Denmark and 10,000 were left dead. there was no clear-cut victor, although the British suffered heavier losses.
(HN, 5/31/98)(AP, 5/31/06)

1916 Jun 5, Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener, British war hero, died when a German mine sank his battleship in the North Sea. In 2001 John Pollock authored "Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace."
(WSJ, 2/27/00, p.A24)

1916 Jun 29, Sir Roger David Casement, the Irish-born diplomat knighted by King George V in 1911, was convicted of treason for his role in Ireland's Easter Rebellion, and sentenced to death. He had been caught on an Irish beach during a foiled attempt to 20,000 German rifles.
(www.firstworldwar.com/bio/casement.htm)(Econ, 7/7/12, p.75)

1916 Jul 1, At 7:30AM, a 5 day, continuous, British artillery bombardment of German lines stopped, and 11 British divisions (100,000 men) went "over the top" toward the Germans. By 9AM 22,000 were dead & another 40,000 were wounded in what became known as the Battle of the Somme. These attacks continued for another five months, costing the British over one million killed & wounded. Field Marshal Douglas Haig commanded the British forces. 4 months of stalemate cost 420,00 British casualties.
(MC, 7/1/02)(AP, 7/15/09)
1916 Jul 1, British court martial was held for the Dublin Easter uprising.
(MC, 7/1/02)

1916 Jul 9, Edward Heath (d.2005), later PM of England (1970-1974), was born in Kent county.
(SFC, 7/18/05, p.B6)

1916 Jul 19, In the WWI Battle at Fromelles, France, German machine guns and artillery left over 5,500 Australians and over 1,500 British killed, wounded or missing in less than 24 hours.
(SFC, 7/20/10, p.A2)

1916 Aug 3, Roger Casement, knighted for his service in the Congo, was hanged at London’s Pentonville Prison for his activities on behalf of Irish independence.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)(www.firstworldwar.com/bio/casement.htm)

1916 Aug 5, The British navy defeated the Ottomans at the naval battle off Port Said, Egypt.
(HN, 8/5/98)

1916 Aug 7, Persia formed an alliance with Britain and Russia.
(HN, 8/7/98)

1916 Sep 15, Armored tanks were introduced by the British during the Battle of the Somme.
(HN, 9/15/00)

1916 Oct 3, James Herriot (d.1995), Yorkshire veterinarian and author, was born in Sunderland, England. His books include "All Creatures Great and Small." [see Mar 10]
(HN, 10/3/00)

1916 Nov 18, Gen. Douglas Haig finally called off 1st Battle of the Somme in Europe.
(MC, 11/18/01)

1916 Nov 21, The HMHS Britannic, the sister ship of the Titanic, sank in the Kea Channel off Greece after being hit by a mine or a torpedo. 30 people in lifeboats died from the suction of the sinking ship. The Britannic, launched in 1914 from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, included an additional expansion joint due to design update following the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
(www.titanic-titanic.com/britannic.shtml)(AH, 10/07, p.14)

1916 Nov 28, The first (German) air attack on London.
(DTnet 11/28/97)

1916 Dec 5, David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as the British Prime Minister.
(HN, 12/5/98)

1916 Cecil Chubb bought the property that contained Stonehenge from a Wiltshire farmer.
(HT, 3/97, p.22)
1916 Britain appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the calamitous attack on the Dardanelles.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.67)
1916 British Summer Time was introduced by the Parliament.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/whostarteddaylightsavingtime)

1918 Aug 22, Britain’s battle cruiser HMS Hood was launched. It was sunk in 1941 by the German battleship Bismarck.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood_(51))

1916-1922 David Lloyd George of Wales served as the Prime Minister of Britain.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.T4)

1917 Feb 7, The British steamer California was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat.
(HN, 2/7/99)

1917 Feb 8, The British steamship Mantola was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. All but seven crew members, who drowned when their lifeboat overturned, were rescued by the HMS Laburnum. The ship sank the next day. The British Ministry of War Transport paid a War Risk Insurance Claim for £110,000 (in 1917 value) for silver that was on board when the ship sank. In 2011 Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered the ship.
(SFC, 10/11/11, p.A6)(www.shipwreck.net/ssmantola.php)

1917 Feb 17, Edmund Bishop (70), English secretary of Thomas Carlyle, died.
(MC, 2/17/02)

1917 Feb 24, The British presented the decoded Zimmermann telegram, a German plot for Mexican help, to Pres. Wilson and an enraged Wilson released the document to the American public on March 1. On April 6, 1917, America formally declared war on Germany and her Allies.
(HNPD, 2/24/99)(MC, 2/24/02)

1917 Mar 11, British troops occupied Baghdad.
(MC, 3/12/02)

1917 Mar 28, The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was founded, these were Great Britain’s first official service women.
(HN, 3/28/99)

1917 Apr 9, Battle of Arras began as Canadian troops launched a massive assault on Vimy Ridge in France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arras_%281917%29)
1917 Apr 9, Edward Thomas (b.1878), British writer and poet, was killed in action during the Battle of Arras. His travel books included “The Icknield Way.” In 2012 Matthew Hollis authored “Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas.”
(Economist, 9/22/12, p.94)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_%28poet%29)

1917 Apr 15, The British defeated the Germans at the battle of Arras.
(HN, 4/15/98)

1917 Jun 4, The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, a British order of chivalry, was established by King George V. The Order included five classes in civil and military divisions in decreasing order of seniority. These included: Knight Grand Cross (GBE) or Dame Grand Cross (GBE), Knight Commander (KBE) or Dame Commander (DBE), Commander (CBE), Officer (OBE), and Member (MBE).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire)

1917 Jun 7, British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig launched his assault in Flanders to take German pressure off his French allies. For months, troops of the British Expeditionary Force fought a series of pointless battles in a nightmarish landscape of knee-deep shell holes filled with mud and blasted, skeletal trees. When the campaign finally ground to a halt on November 10, 1917, the BEF had suffered losses of 300,000 men and German losses were around 200,000--for a total gain of four miles.
(HNPD, 6/7/99)

1917 Jun 13, Germany bombed London.
(MC, 6/13/02)

1917 Jun 15, Great Britain pledged the release of all Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
(HN, 6/15/98)

1917 Jun 17, British king George V took the name Windsor. [see Jun 19, Jul 17]
(MC, 6/17/02)

1917 Jun 19, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames. The family took the name "Windsor." [see Jun 17, Jul 17]
(DT, 6/19/97)(MC, 6/19/02)

1917 Jul 9, British warship "Vanguard" exploded at Scapa Flow killing 804.
(MC, 7/9/02)

1917 Jul 15, Robert Conquest, English author (Back to Life), was born.
(MC, 7/15/02)

1917 Jul 17, The British royal family adopted the Windsor name. King George V changed the family name to the House of Windsor from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. [see Jun 17,19]
(AP, 7/17/97)(SFEC, 1/19/97, Par p.2)(DTnet, 6/19/97)

1917 Jul 22, British bombed German lines at Ypres with 4,250,000 grenades.
(MC, 7/22/02)

1917 Jul 31, The third Battle of Ypres commenced as the British attacked the German lines.
(HN, 7/31/98)

1917 Aug 2, Royal Naval Air Service officer E.H. Dunning became the first pilot to land on the deck of a moving ship. He performed the tricky maneuver by flying his Sopwith Pup alongside the HMS Furious as it steamed at high speed into the wind, then side-slipping inward to the deck. Furious joined the British Royal Navy as an aircraft carrier after being fitted with a primitive flight deck. While the converted ship solved the problem of launching fighter aircraft, recovery was still dangerous and costly, since planes launched from the flight deck were forced to land at sea, where they were often lost. Five days after his successful deck landing, Dunning drowned during another attempt when his aircraft developed mechanical problems and plunged overboard.
(HNPD, 8/5/98)

1917 Sep 3, The 1st night bombing of London by German fighter planes.
(MC, 9/3/01)

1917 Sep 4, The American expeditionary force in France suffered its first fatalities in World War I when a German plane attacked a British-run base hospital..
(AP, 9/4/08)

1917 Sep 20, The British assaulted the Polygon Forest in France.
(MC, 9/20/01)

1917 Oct 8, Rodney Porter, British biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, was born.
(HN, 10/8/00)

1917 Oct 17, The 1st British bombing of Germany took place.
(MC, 10/17/01)

1917 Oct, The British Admiralty ordered that all naval and merchant ships be painted in dazzle camouflage, to help reduce their visibility to German submarines. The painting style was the idea of Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) and came from his familiarity with the avant garde art styles of cubism and vorticism.
(ON, 12/05, p.2)(www.ww2poster.co.uk/artists/Wilkinson.htm)

1917 Nov 2, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, in what became known as the Balfour Declaration, expressed support for a "national home" for the Jews of Palestine. It encouraged Jewish immigration to Israel in the decade after WW I.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(AP, 11/2/97)

1917 Nov 7, British General Sir Edmond Allenby broke the Turkish defensive line in the Third Battle of Gaza.
(HN, 11/7/98)

1917 Nov 10, The assault on Flanders, begun July 11, finally ground to a halt. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had suffered losses of 300,000 men and German losses were around 200,000--for a total gain of four miles and the occupation of Passchendaele. The battle was later described by Edwin Campion Vaughan in “Some Desperate Glory” (1981).
(HN, 6/7/98)(HNQ, 11/2/98)(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)

1917 Nov 16, British occupied Tel Aviv and Jaffa.
(MC, 11/16/01)

1917 Nov 20, In the 1st tank battle Britain broke through German lines.
(MC, 11/20/01)

1917 Dec 9, British forces under General Allenby captured Jerusalem. He liberated the city from Turkish control.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-12)(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(MC, 12/9/01)

1917 Dec 16, Arthur C. Clark, English science fiction writer, was born. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He is best remembered for his book "The Sentinel," the source of Kubrick’s film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN, 12/16/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke)

1917 Two young girls in the Yorkshire countryside took photographs that seemed to capture a group of fairies, the Cottingley fairies. The photos were challenged, mocked by the press and defended by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and derided by Harry Houdini. In 1997 the film "Fairytale: A True Story" was directed by Charles Sturridge and written by Ernie Contreras.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D6)(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.A20)
1917 Edward Dene Morel, Congo activist, was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor at Pentonville Prison for his anti-war activities.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)

1918 Feb 6, Britain’s Representation of the People Act, aka the Fourth Reform Act, granted working class men in the armed forces the right to vote. Female property owners over age 30 were also granted the right to vote.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act_1918)

1918 Apr 1, In England the Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.
(AP, 4/1/98)(HN, 4/1/98)(OTD)

1918 Apr 4, Battle of Somme [France], an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.
(HN, 4/4/99)

1918 Apr 22, British naval forces attempted to sink block-ships in the German U-boat bases at the Battle of Zeeburgge.
(HN, 4/22/99)

1918 May 17, British authorities arrested Irish leader Eamon de Valera and other Sinn Fein leaders on suspicion of conspiring with the Germans.
(ON, 9/04, p.5)

1918 May 19, Florence Chadwick, the 1st to swim English Channel both ways, was born.
(MC, 5/19/02)

1918 May 29, Isabel Dean, actress (5 Days one Summer, Virgin Island, Ransom), was born in England.
(SC, 5/29/02)

1918 Jul 26, Britain's top war ace, Edward Mannock, was shot down by ground fire on the Western Front.
(HN, 7/26/98)

1918 Aug 2, A British force landed in Archangel, Russia, to support White Russian opposition to the Bolsheviks.
(HN, 8/2/98)

1918 Aug 11, The British attacked with 450 tanks at the Battle of Amiens as the Allies pushed Germany back.
(MC, 8/11/02)(PC, 1992, p.728)

1918 Aug 20, Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during World War I.
(AP, 8/20/97)

1918 Sep 6, The German Army began a general retreat across the Aisne, with British troops in pursuit.
(HN, 9/6/98)

1918 Sep 12, British troops retook Havincourt, Moeuvres, and Trescault along the Western Front.
(HN, 9/12/98)

1918 Sep 22, General Allenby led the British army against the Turks, taking Haifa and Nazareth, Palestine.
(HN, 9/22/98)

1918 Oct 7, C. Hubert H. Parry, English musicologist and composer (Jerusalem), died at 70.
(MC, 10/7/01)

1918 Oct 10, While President Woodrow Wilson was attempting to establish "peace without victory" with Germany, the German UB-123 torpedoed RMS Leinster, a civilian mail and passenger ferry, off the coast of Ireland. Leinster was usually escorted by a Royal Air Force airship as a precaution, but on October 10, 1918, the ferry set out alone. Leinster was sunk; 564 passengers and crewmen perished, many of them American and Allied troops. After Leinster, the Germans lost their chance for an easy peace.
(HNPD, 10/10/99)

1918 Oct 26, Cecil H. Chubb donated the property of Stonehenge to the English state.
(HT, 3/97, p.22)(www.this-is-amesbury.co.uk/stonehenge.html)

1918 Dec 3, The Allied Conference ended in London; Germany was required to pay to full limits for the war.
(HN, 12/3/02)

1918 Arthur Ransome (1884-1967), British agent and writer, wrote a propaganda pamphlet titled: “On Behalf of Russia: An Open Letter to America.” In 2009 Roland Chambers authored “The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome.”
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.73)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ransome)
1918 Duncan Grant painted a portrait of his lifetime companion Vanessa Bell. They both figured in the complex love affairs of the Bloomsbury Group. The painting is now in the London National Gallery.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T8)
1918 Lytton Strachey published "Eminent Victorians," a scandalous collection of sketches that revolutionized English biography.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.4)
1918 In Britain dancer Maud Allan sued MP Noel Pemberton-Billing (1881-1948) for libel and lost. Allan, a San Francisco-raised dancer, had achieved fame for her “Visions of Salome” interpretive dance. Pemberton-Brilling wanted to use the court as a soapbox for his int’l. homosexual conspiracy theories. In 2012 Mark Jackson’s “Salomania,” based on the trial, debuted in San Francisco.
(SFC, 6/23/12, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Pemberton_Billing)

1919 Jan 2, There was an anti-British uprising in Ireland.
(MC, 1/2/02)

1919 Jan 5, British ships shelled the Bolshevik headquarters in Riga.
(HN, 1/5/99)

1919 Feb 16, Sir Mark Sykes (b.1879), best known for the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement dividing up the Middle East in anticipation of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, died of Spanish flu in Paris. In 2008 an Oxford team took tissue samples before reburying his body in its grave in East Yorkshire. They hoped to find clues that might help fight a future global influenza outbreak.
(AP, 9/17/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sykes)

1919 Apr 4, Antony Tudor, choreographer (Metropolitan Opera 1957), was born in England.
(MC, 4/4/02)

1919 Apr 13, In the Amritsar Massacre British forces under the command of General Reginald Dyer killed hundreds of Indian nationalists in the thickly crowded plaza at Jallianwala Bagh.
(HN, 4/13/98)(EWH, 4th ed., p.1101)

1919 May 9, Arthur English, comedian, actor (Malachi's Cove), was born.
(MC, 5/9/02)

1919 May 18, Margot Fonteyn (d.1991), ballet dancer, was born in Surrey, England, as Peggy Hookham.
(HN, 5/18/01)

1919 May 29, A solar eclipse occurred that was photographed by two British expeditions, one in Africa and the other in Sobral, Brazil. Arthur Eddington, British astronomer, confirmed Einstein’s prediction of the deflection of light from Principe, a Portuguese island off the Atlantic coast of Africa. In 1980 Harry Colling and Trevor Pinch published "The Golem," an account of the expedition. The play “Rose Tattoo” by Tennessee (Thomas Lanier) Williams was originally titled “The Eclipse of May 29, 1919.”
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.E3)(www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/Edd.on1919.html)

1919 Jun 14, Pilot John William Alcock (1892-1919) and navigator Arthur Witten Brown (1886-1948) took off from St. John’s, Newfoundland, for Clifden, Ireland, on the first nonstop transatlantic flight. The flight lasted 16 hours and 28 minutes and carried the first transatlantic airmail. They won a 10 thousand pound prize, first offered by the Daily Mail in 1913.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)

1919 Jul 15, Iris Murdoch (d.1999), author of 28 novels (A Severed Head, The Black Prince), was born in Dublin.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)(HN, 7/15/01)

1919 Jul 21, The British House of Lords ratified the Versailles Treaty.
(HN, 7/21/98)

1919 Jul 26, James Lovelock, British biologist and inventor, was born. He developed the Gaia hypothesis. According to this idea the earth is influenced by life to sustain life, and the planet is a the core of a single, unified, living system. "The earth is a living organism, and I’ll stick by that," he says.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)

1919 Aug 19, Afghanistan established independence from the UK with the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi.
(AFP, 8/19/10)

1919 Aug 25, The 1st scheduled passenger service by airplane between Paris and London.
(MC, 8/25/02)

1919 Aug 28, Godfrey Hounsfield, British inventor of the EMI-scanner, was born.
(RTH, 8/28/99)

1919 Aug, The British regime banned Ireland’s Sinn Fein.
(www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blmanagainstempire/)

1919 Sep 27, British troops withdrew from Archangel.
(MC, 9/27/01)

1919 Sep, The British regime banned the Irish Parliament (Dail Eireann).
(www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blmanagainstempire/)

1919 Oct 26, Elgar's Cello Concerto premiered in Queen's Hall London.
(MC, 10/26/01)

1919 Nov 11, The first 2-minutes’ silence was observed in Britain to commemorate those who died in the Great War.
(HN, 11/11/98)

1919 Nov 28, American-born Lady Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament.
(DTnet 11/28/97)(HN, 11/28/98)

1919 Dec 1, AA Milne's "Mr. Pim Passes By," premiered in Manchester.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1919 Dec 1, Lady Astor was sworn in as the first female member of the British Parliament.
(AP, 12/1/00)

1919 Dec 10, Captain Ross Smith became the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
(HN, 12/10/98)

1919 Dec 18, British pilot John William Alcock (b.1892), enroute to a Paris air show, was killed while making a forced landing in fog near Rouen. He and navigator Arthur Witten Brown (1886-1948) had recently completed the world’s first nonstop transatlantic flight [see June 14].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)

1919 Dec 23, Britain instituted a new constitution for India.
(HN, 12/23/98)

1919 Britain gave power over libraries to its counties.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)

1919 The Emir of Afghanistan declared jihad against Britain’s forces in the North-West Frontier Province. In response Britain shipped a single Handley Page biplane bomber to Karachi. It flew over Kabul and dropped four 20-pound bombs. The emir sued for peace shortly thereafter.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.20)

1919-1921 The 3rd Anglo-Afghan war began. The British were defeated, and Afghanistan gained full control of her foreign affairs.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)

1920 Feb 4, The 1st flight from London to South Africa took off and lasted 1 month.
(MC, 2/4/02)

1920 Mar 20, Britain and its allies formally occupied Istanbul.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.95)

1920 Mar 23, Britain denounced the U.S. because of their delay in joining the League of Nations.
(HN, 3/23/98)

1920 Mar 28, Dirk Bogarde, actor (Death in Venice, Servant), was born in London, England.
(MC, 3/28/02)

1920 Mar 31, British parliament accepted Irish "Home Rule" law.
(MC, 3/31/02)

1920 Apr 20, Balfour Declaration was recognized following a conference in San Remo, Italy. It was agreed that a mandate to Britain should be formally given by the League of Nations over an area, which in 2010 comprised Israel, Jordan and the Golan Heights, to be called the "Mandate of Palestine". The Balfour Declaration was to apply to the whole of the mandated territory. The doctrine was named after British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, who had first articulated it as a policy on 2 November 1917.
(www.ijs.org.au/The-Balfour-Declaration/default.aspx)

1920 Apr 24, British Mandate over Palestine went into effect and lasted for 28 years. The British organized a police force with some 3,000 British, Arab and Jewish officers.
(MC, 4/24/02)(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)

1920 May 10, Richard Adams, English novelist (Watership Down), was born.
(HN, 5/10/02)

1920 Jun 28, Clarissa Eden was born to Major Jack Spencer-Churchill and Lady Gwendoline Bertie. In 1952 she married Anthony Eden (1897-1977) who later became Britain’s PM (1955-1957). Her father was the younger brother of Winston Churchill. In 2008 Cate Haste edited “Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden.”
(Econ, 1/19/08, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Eden,_Countess_of_Avon)

1920 Aug 3, P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James), British mystery writer, was born.
(HN, 8/3/00)

1920 Aug 13, George Shearing, blind pianist, composer (Lullaby of Byrdland), was born in London.
(MC, 8/13/02)

1920 Sep 2, W. Somerset Maugham's "East of Suez," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/2/01)

1920 Arthur Pigou (1877-1959), English economist, authored “The Economics of Welfare.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cecil_Pigou)

1920 England passed a Firearms Bill to regulate private use.
(WSJ, 8/6/02, p.D6)

1920 Another Government of Ireland Act was passed by the British government. This act had a proviso that the reunification of Ireland was an ultimate goal.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-15)

1920 Britain ferried 6 RAF planes to East Africa and used them to bomb the fort of Abdullah Hassan, the “Mad Mullah” of Somaliland. The mullah escaped with 700 riflemen.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.20)

1920 Reginald Farrer (b.1880), Edwardian rare-plant collector, died in Burma. In 2004 Nicola Shulman authored the biography “Rock Gardening.”
(WSJ, 10/29/04, p.W10)

1920 Adm. John Fisher, former First Sea Lord, died. In 1969 Richard Hough authored "Admiral of the Fleet: The Life of John Fisher."
(ON, 3/02, p.11)

1920-1944 Montagu Norman served as governor of the Bank of England.
(Econ, 2/26/05, p.12)

1921 Feb 5, John M. Pritchard, conductor, was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/5/02)

1921 Feb 12, Winston Churchill of London was appointed colonial secretary.
(HN, 2/12/97)

1921 Feb 18, British troops occupied Dublin.
(MC, 2/18/02)

1921 Mar 1, The Allies rejected a $7.5 billion reparations offer in London. German delegations decided to quit all talks.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1921 Mar 1, Rwanda was ceded to England.
(SC, 3/1/02)

1921 Mar 16, Britain signed a bilateral trade agreement with Russia.
(HN, 3/16/98)

1921 Mar 17, Dr Marie Stopes opened Britain's 1st birth control clinic in London.
(MC, 3/17/02)

1921 Mar 28, Dirk Niven Van den Bogaerde (d.1999) was born in London. He later achieved fame as an actor with the title Sir Dirk Borgarde.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.C8)

1921 Mar 30, Countess of Sutherland, English great land owner, multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 3/30/02)

1921 Mar 31, Great Britain declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.
(HN, 3/31/98)

1921 Apr 16, Peter Ustinov (d.2004), actor (Death on Nile, Logan's Run, Billy Budd), was born in London.
(AP, 3/29/04)

1921 May 27, Afghanistan achieved sovereignty after 84 years of British control.
(MC, 5/27/02)

1921 Jun 10, Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince, Consort of Elizabeth II, was born in Greece.
(MC, 6/10/02)

1921 Jun 28, A coal strike in Great Britain was settled after three months.
(HN, 6/28/98)

1921 Jul 8, Great Britain and Ireland agreed to end hostilities after centuries of strife. Southern Ireland was granted independence and 6 counties in Northern Ireland remained part of the UK.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)

1921 Oct 21, Malcolm Arnold, composer (Bridge over River Kwai), was born in Northampton, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)

1921 Dec 5, The British Empire reached an accord with Sinn Fein; Ireland was to become a free state.
(HN, 12/5/98)

1921 Dec 6, Ireland’s 26 southern counties became independent from Britain forming the Irish Free State.
(HN, 12/6/00)

1921 Sir Alfred Munnings painted a portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, astride his mare Forest Witch. It sold for $2.3 million in 1998.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A2)
1921 The British M16 intelligence agency was formed.
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.A12)
1921 Frederick Soddy (b.1877), English radiochemist, received the Nobel prize for chemistry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Soddy)
1921 The British contrived the election of Haj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) as the Mufti of Jerusalem. In 2008 David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman authored “Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam.”
(WSJ, 6/26/08, p.A13)
1921 At the Cairo Conference, convened by Winston Churchill, Britain and France carved up Arabia and created Jordan under Emir Abdullah; his brother Faisal (Feisal) became King of Iraq. France was given influence over Syria and Jewish immigration was allowed into Palestine. Faisal I died one year after independence and his son, Ghazi I succeeded him. In 2004 Christopher Catherwood authored “Churchill’s Folly,” and account of the founding of Iraq.
(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.D3)(WSJ, 7/22/04, p.D10)
1921 Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and archeologist Gertrude Bell promoted "the sherifian solution," under which the Hashemite family-- Hussein, the sherif of Mecca, and his sons, would rule over the region under Britain's eye.
(Econ, 7/19/03, p.69)

c1921 The unknown soldier of Great Britain was buried in Westminster Abbey.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.B8)

1921 In India Mohandas Gandhi began peaceful the noncooperation movement against British rule.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)

1922 Jan 22, James Bryce (b.1838), 1st Viscount Bryce, British jurist, historian and politician, died. He had served as ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913. His books included “The American Commonwealth,” a classic study of the US Constitution.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9017827/James-Bryce-Viscount-Bryce)

1922 Feb 2, James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" was published in Paris with 1,000 copies.
(SFC, 10/15/99, p.C12)(MC, 2/2/02)

1922 Feb 6, The Washington Disarmament Conference came to an end with signature of final treaty forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years. The US, UK, France, Italy & Japan signed the Washington naval arms limitation.
(HN, 2/6/99)(MC, 2/6/02)

1922 Feb 15, Marconi began regular broadcasting transmissions from Essex.
(MC, 2/15/02)

1922 Feb 28, Britain declared Egypt a sovereign state, but British troops remained.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)

1922 Mar 18, Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years' imprisonment for civil disobedience. He was released after serving two years. [see Mar 22]
(AP, 3/18/97)(HN, 3/18/98)

1922 Mar 22, A British court sentenced Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years in prison. [see Mar 18]
(MC, 3/22/02)

1922 Apr 13, John Gerard Braine, British novelist (Room at the Top), was born.
(HN, 4/13/01)

1922 Apr 15, Neville Mariner, conductor, was born. [see Apr 15,1924]
(HN, 4/15/01)

1922 Apr 16, Kingsley Amis (d.1995), novelist and poet, was born. He wrote more than 20 novels and 6 volumes of verse. His work included "The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage." In 1998 Eric Jacobs published the biography "Kingsley Amis."
(WSJ, 10/23/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.3)(HN, 4/16/01)

1922 Jun 30, Irish rebels in London assassinated Sir Henry Wilson, the British deputy for Northern Ireland.
(HN, 6/30/98)

1922 Jul 17, Donald Davie, English poet and literary critic, was born.
(HN, 7/17/01)

1922 Sep 11, The British mandate of Palestine began.
(MC, 9/11/01)

1922 Nov 2, English archeologist Charles Leonard Woolley began excavating the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, located between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf.
(ON, 8/20/11, p.7)

1922 Nov 6, King George V proclaimed Irish Free state.
(MC, 11/6/01)

1922 Nov 14, The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, began the first daily radio broadcasts from Marconi House. The company was formed with a commercial mission to sell radio sets. General manager John Reith (33), Scottish engineer, envisaged an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure.
(AP, 11/14/97)(www.bbc.co.uk/heritage/story/1920s.shtml)

1922 Harley Granville Barker, English playwright, wrote "The Secret Life," a romantic melodrama set in England’s countryside after WW I.
(WSJ, 8/29/97, p.A9)
1922 T.S. Eliot wrote his long poem "The Waste Land."
(WSJ, 9/12/96, p.A14)
1922 Scotland joined the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
(WSJ, 4/16/97, p.A13)
1922 Britain decommissioned the HMS Ascension and the island became a dependency of St. Helena. Ascension Island issued its first postage stamps.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.160)(www.britlink.org/ascension.html)

1923 Jan 4, The Paris Conference on war reparations hit a deadlock as the French insisted on the hard line and the British insisted on Reconstruction.
(HN, 1/4/99)

1923 Apr 5, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert (56), England’s 5th Earl of Lord Carnarvon, died in Egypt from an infected mosquito bite. He financed the excavation of the Egyptian New Kingdom Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert,_5th_Earl_of_Carnarvon)

1923 Apr 21, John Mortimor, British barrister and playwright, was born. He created Rumpole of the Bailey.
(HN, 4/21/99)

1923 Apr 23, Lady Elizabeth (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 1900-2002) married Prince Albert, Duke of York (d.1952) in Westminster Abbey. Albert was crowned King of England in 1937. [see Apr 26]
(SFC, 8/5/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC, 3/31/02, p.A3)

1923 Apr 26, English prince Albert (George VI) married lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. [see Apr 23]
(MC, 4/26/02)

1923 May 25, Britain recognized Transjordan with Abdullah as its leader.
(SC, 5/25/02)

1923 Aug 12, Enrico Tiraboschi became the 1st to swim English Channel westward.
(SC, 8/12/02)

1923 Aug 29, Richard Attenborough, actor, director (Gandhi, Young Winston), was born in England.
(MC, 8/29/01)

1923 Sep 4, Noel Coward's revue "London Calling," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/4/01)

1923 Sep 26, Sir Aubrey Herbert (b.1880), Englishman, died. He worked for Albania’s independence and was twice offered the throne of Albania. He authored the WW 1 journal “Mons, Anzac & Kut.”
(www.ku.edu/carrie/texts/world_war_I/Mons/mons.htm)(Econ, 12/18/04, p.16)

1923 Nov 25, Transatlantic broadcasting from England to America for the first time.
(HN, 11/25/98)

1923 Dec 21, Nepal changed from British protectorate to independent nation.
(MC, 12/21/01)

1923 Dec 31, BBC began using the Big Ben chime ID.
(MC, 12/31/01)

1923 Rudyard Kipling authored “The Irish Guards in the Great War,” a history of the unit that his son fought and died for in WW I.
(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1923 P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) authored "Leave It to Psmith."
(NW, 8/20/01, p.56)

1923 Britain’s King George V chose Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) for the premiership instead of George Curzon.
(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.D10)(ON, 11/05, p.2)(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)

1923 Francis Meynell, a British book designer and publisher, founded Nonsuch Press with his wife Vera, and friend David Garnett. The following year they brought out “The Week-End Book,” a handbook for the rural explorer. The last edition was published in 1955.
(WSJ, 6/3/06, p.P8)

1924 Jan 3, Howard Carter opened the doors to the last shrine in the hall, revealing the large stone sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. The next day Carter was photographed with Arthur Callender and an Egyptian workman in the Burial Chamber, looking through the open doors of the four gilded shrines, towards the quartzite sarcophagus tomb of Tutankhamun.
(http://tinyurl.com/6crmufa)(www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4acphot.html)

1924 Jan 21, Benny Hill (d.1992), British comedian who hosted his own comedy show, was born in Southampton, England. [Some sources give 1925 as the birth year]
(HN, 1/21/99)(www.nndb.com/people/883/000031790/)

1924 Feb 1, Soviet Union was formally recognized by Britain.
(MC, 2/1/02)

1924 Feb 14, Patricia Edwina Victoria Mountbatten, the 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, was born in London.
(www.thepeerage.com/p10115.htm)

1924 Mar 26, Premiere of Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" in London.
(SS, 3/26/02)

1924 Apr 1, Imperial Airways was formed in Britain.
(OTD)

1924 Apr 15, Neville Mariner, conductor, was born in Lincoln, England. [see Apr 15,1922]
(MC, 4/15/02)

1924 Jun 8, George Mallory (38), a British schoolteacher, and Andrew Irvine (28), a student at Cambridge, attempted to reach the top of Mount Everest from their camp at 26,800 feet. The body of Mallory was found May 1, 1999 on a ledge at 27,000 feet. Irvine’s body was not found. Two books were published in 1999 that used parallel narratives for the 2 expeditions: "The Lost Explorer" by Conrad Anker and David Roberts, and "Ghosts of Everest" by Jochen Hemmleb, Larry A. Johnson and Eric R. Simonson (as told to William E. Northdurft). In 2012 Wade Davis won Britain’s leading nonfiction book prize for “Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest.”
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 12/16/99, p.W10)(SFC, 11/14/12, p.F3)

1924 Jun 23, Cecil [James] Sharp (64), English folk musician, died.
(MC, 6/23/02)

1924 Jul 13, Alfred Marshall (b.1842), a founding father of modern economics, died in Cambridge, England. His book, “Principles of Economics” (1890), was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years.
(Econ, 10/27/12, SR p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Marshall)

1924 Aug 3, Joseph Conrad (b.1857), Ukraine-born and Poland-raised novelist (Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), died in England. In 2008 Jim Stape authored “The several Lives of Joseph Conrad.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad)

1924 Aug 15, Robert Oxton Bolt, English screenwriter and playwright, was born. He is best known for "A Man for all Seasons."
(HN, 8/15/00)(MC, 8/15/02)

1924 Aug 16, Conference about German recovery payments opened in London.
(MC, 8/16/02)

1924 Nov 2, Sunday Express published the 1st British crossword puzzle.
(MC, 11/2/01)

1924 Nov 19, Sir Lee Stack, the Sirdar and Governor-General of the Sudan, was assassinated. This and subsequent British demands, which Egypt’s PM Zaghloul felt to be unacceptable, led Zaghloul to resign and to play no further role in government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saad_Zaghloul)

1924 Nov 22, England ordered the Egyptians out of Sudan.
(MC, 11/22/01)

1924 Nov, Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) returned for a 2nd time as Britain’s PM and held office until 1929.
(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)

1924 Noel Coward (1899-1973) wrote, directed and starred in “The Vortex,” a play about drug abuse among the English upper classes.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.94)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Coward)

1924 Edward Dene Morel, Congo activist, was elected to the British Parliament. He soon died of a heart attack at age 51.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)

1924 In Britain Labor MP Herbert Dunnico voted against Trident, a program to build fast, light warships.
(Econ, 3/17/07, p.62)

1924 Frances Hodgson Burnett (b.1849), English author, died. In 2004 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina authored “Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden.”
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.82)

1925 Feb 15, The London Zoo announced it would install lights to cheer up fogged in animals.
(HN, 2/15/98)

1925 Mar 21, Peter Brook, director, was born in west London. In 2005 Michael Kustow authored “Peter Brook: A Biography.”
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.89)

1925 Apr 3, Tony Benn, British minister of technology (1968), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)

1925 Apr 23, The 1st London performance of operetta "Fasquita" was staged.
(MC, 4/23/02)

1925 May 1, Cyprus became a British Crown Colony.
(MC, 5/1/02)

1925 May 14, Henry Rider Haggard, English writer (Dawn, She), died.
(MC, 5/14/02)

1925 Jun 15, Richard Baker, English broadcaster, was born.
(HT, 6/15/00)

1925 Jul 31, An Unemployment Insurance Act was passed in England.
(MC, 7/31/02)

1925 Aug, The first Fastnet race, with seven entries, was won by the Jolie Brise. The race starts off Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England, rounds the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and then finishes at Plymouth in the South of England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastnet_race)

1925 Sep 8, Peter Sellers, English comic actor, was born in Southsea, Hampshire, England. He became famous for his role as Inspector Clouseau.
(HN, 9/8/00)

1925 Oct 13, Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister (1979-90), was born in Grantham, England.
(HN, 10/13/98)(MC, 10/13/01)

1925 Oct 16, Angela Lansbury, actress (Jessica-Murder She Wrote), was born in London, England.
(MC, 10/16/01)

1925 Dec 1, After a seven year occupation, 7,000 British troops evacuated Cologne, Germany.
(HN, 12/1/98)

1925 John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist, authored a pamphlet titled: “The Economic Consqeuences of Mr. Churchill.“ The American edition was titled “The economic consequences of sterling parity.” It was a devastating critique of Winston Churchill’s defense of the gold standard.
(Econ, 7/10/10, p.81)(http://tinyurl.com/2c7cfbn)
1925 The British coal-mining industry suffered an economic crisis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)
1925 The sale of British titles was prohibited by the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_(Prevention_of_Abuses)_Act_1925)
1925 Britain set its retirement age at 65.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.16)
1925 The Locarno Treaty was signed between Britain, Belgium, Germany, Italy and France. It was a treaty of non-aggression by Germany, France and Belgium and a mutual guarantee and promise of assistance by Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Italy to maintain the demilitarization of the Rhineland. It was not a true guarantee against a German invasion, only a promise by Britain to send troops after an invasion.
(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A22)
1925 Winston Churchill returned the British pound to a gold standard.
(Econ, 12/1/07, p.31)
1925 Tomkins Corp. (TKS-NYSE) was originally founded as F. H. Tomkins Buckle Company, a small British manufacturer of buckles and fasteners. By 2006 the Company had grown to become an international engineering business with sales of £3 billion and some 40,000 employees throughout the world.
(www.tomkins.co.uk/docs/aboutus/history.jsp)
1925 Lord George Curzon (b.1859), British former Viceroy over India, died. In 2003 David Gilmour authored the biography "Curzon: Imperial Statesman."
(WUD, 1994, p.357)(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.D10)(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.M6)

1926 Jan 31, Jean Simmons, actress (Thorn Birds, Guys and Dolls), was born in London, England.
(MC, 1/31/02)

1926 Mar 7, The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place, between New York City and London.
(AP, 3/7/98)

1926 Mar 31, John Fowles (d.2005), English novelist, was born. His work included “The Collector” (1963) and “The French Lieutenant's Woman” (1969).
(HN, 3/31/01)(SFC, 11/8/05, p.B5)

1926 Apr 21, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor II, later queen of England, was born.
(HN, 4/21/98)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)

1926 May 3, There was a British general strike and 3 million workers supported the miners. The strike lasted 9 days.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)

1926 May 9, Joseph Malaby Dent (b.1849), British bookbinder turned publisher, died. He began Everyman’s Library in 1906, a collection of low cost classic books. Random House and Knopf debuted a revived line in 1991.
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.D4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Dent)

1926 Jun 5, David Wagoner, poet and novelist (The Escape Artist), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)

1926 Aug 6, Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle (1905-2003), American Olympic gold medalist, became the first woman to swim the English Channel. Before setting out from Cap Griz-Nez, France, at 7:09 a.m., Ederle coated her body with layers of lard and petroleum jelly to insulate her from the cold waters. On that day, the sea was so rough that steamship crossings had been cancelled, but Ederle swam on in spite of being buffeted by waves and plagued by seasickness. She reached Dover at 9:40 p.m., after swimming the Channel in 14 hours and 39 minutes. This time broke the existing world record of 21 hours and 45 minutes set by British Navy Captain Matthew Webb in 1875. Ederle died Nov 30, 2003. [see Sep 11,1951]
(AP, 8/6/97)(HNQ, 7/31/98)(HNPD, 8/30/98)(SFC, 12/1/03, p.A23)

1926 Oct 14, The book "Winnie-the-Pooh" by Alan Alexander Milne (d.1956) was released. Milne wrote this and other stories, centering the tales around his little son, Christopher Robin, and Christopher's stuffed animals, like the honey-loving Pooh Bear, Eeyore (the donkey), Piglet and Tigger. The geography was based on real places in 14,000 acres of Ashdown Forest, in the northwest corner of East Sussex, England.
(Hem., 8/96, p.107)(MC, 10/14/01)

1926 Samuel Ryder of Lancashire (d.1935), England, came up with the idea of biannual golf matches between the English and Americans. He made a lot of money selling penny-a-pack seeds. The Ryder Cup of golf is named after him.
(SFC, 9/26/98, p.E4)
1926 Sir Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, got Britain back on the gold standard with help by a loan organized by Benjamin Strong, head of the US Federal Reserve of New York.
(Econ, 1/10/09, p.73)
1926 A general strike was crushed by British authorities under PM Stanley Baldwin.
(SFC, 11/29/99, p.A26)
1926 Agatha Christie (d.1976), mystery writer, disappeared from her native Devon. Scotland Yard undertook a massive search and found her registered at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. She had checked in as Nancy Neel, the name of her husband’s mistress, and was thought to be suffering from hysterical amnesia.
(SFEC,10/26/97, p.T5)
1926 Britain’s Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was formed by the merger of four chemical companies and was a pioneer in the plastics industry.
(Hem., 1/97, p.27)(http://tinyurl.com/3w5euy)
1926 In England Emma Alice Smith disappeared as she cycled between her home and a nearby railway station 83 years ago. She had worked as a servant in a large house near her home in the village of Waldron, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of London. Her disappearance remained unsolved, and her body missing, until 2007, when David Wright, the teenager's great-nephew, came forward to tell police about a confession, a long-held family secret. A confession by Emma Alice's sister, Lily, (d.1995) said a gentleman, on his deathbed sometime in 1952 to 1953, had confessed to killing her sister.
(AP, 2/4/09)

1927 Jan 7, Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1927 Jan 19, British government decided to send troops to China.
(MC, 1/19/02)

1927 Jan 24, British expeditionary force of 12,000 was sent to China to protect concessions at Shanghai.
(HN, 1/24/99)

1927 Mar 21, Kuomintang Army conquered Shanghai as British marines fled.
(MC, 3/21/02)

1927 Mar 26, Gaumont-British Film Corporation formed.
(SS, 3/26/02)

1927 Apr 12, The British Cabinet came out in favor of women voting rights.
(HN, 4/12/98)

1927 Apr 19, Rudolf Friml's "Vagabond King" opened in London.
(MC, 4/19/02)

1927 May 20, Saudi Arabia became independent of Great Britain with the Treaty of Jedda.
(MC, 5/20/02)

1927 Jul 7, Christopher Stone became the first British ‘disc jockey’ when he played records for the BBC.
(HN, 7/7/98)

1927 Aug 9, Robert Shaw, actor and writer, was born in England.
(HN, 8/9/00)(MC, 8/9/02)

1927 Aug 11, Raymond Leppard, conductor (St Louis Symphony Orch), was born in London, England.
(MC, 8/11/02)

1927 Oct 14, Roger Moore, actor (Alaskans, Maverick, Saint, 007), was born in London, England.
(MC, 10/14/01)

1927 Oct 28, Cleo Laine, actress and singer (Flesh to a Tiger), was born in Middlesex, England.
(MC, 10/28/01)

1927 Dec 14, Iraq gained independence from Britain, but British troops remained.
(MC, 12/14/01)

1927 William Hodge & Co. published “The Trial of Herbert Rowse Armstrong” as part of its Notable British Trial series. Armstrong was hanged in 1922, the only solicitor ever executed in Britain, for murdering his wife with weedkiller.
(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.P8)
1927 Havergal Brian (1876-1972), British composer, completed “The Gothic,” a symphony in D minor. The work was begun in 1919.
(Econ, 7/30/11, p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havergal_Brian)
1927 Britain passed laws supporting British film making and forced cinemas to show a minimum quota of British films.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.62)
1927 Elsie Wagg thought of getting private gardeners to open up their gardens to visitors for a small contribution to a nursing charity. By 2003 Britain's National Garden Scheme had over 3,500 gardens open to visitors at least 1 day a year.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.119)

1928 Jan 11, Thomas Hardy (87), English novelist, died near Dorchester. His books included “Far from Maddening Crowd” (1874) and “Jude the Obscure” (1895). In 2006 Claire Tomalin authored “Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.96)

1928 Jan 17, Vidal Sassoon, hair stylist/CEO (Vidal Sassoon), was born in London.
(MC, 1/17/02)

1928 Feb 3, Frankie Vaughn (d.1999), later singer, was born as Frank Abelson in Liverpool. His songs included "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine."
(SFC, 9/18/99, p.A21)

1928 Feb 7, Australian Bert Hinkler took off from London in a two-seat Avro 581E Avian biplane on the first leg of his solo flight from England to Australia. The unassuming Hinkler's grueling flight was little noted by the press until he reached India, then the world press got caught up in the drama of another "Lone Eagle" performance so soon after Charles A. Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. As he plotted a course across Asia and the Timor Sea using a London Times atlas as his navigational chart, a newspaper editor dubbed him "Hustling Hinkler," a nickname later immortalized by the American Tin Pan Alley hit song, "Hustling Hinkler Up in the Sky." On February 22, after flying 128 hours in less than 16 days, Hinkler's 11,250-mile adventure ended in Darwin, Australia.
(HNPD, 2/7/99)

1928 Feb 15, H.H. Asquith (b.1852), former British prime minister (1908-1916), died.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/39056/HH-Asquith-1st-earl-of-Oxford-and-Asquith)

1928 Mar 22, Noel Coward's musical "This Year of Grace," premiered in London.
(MC, 3/22/02)

1928 Apr 26, Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition opened in London.
(MC, 4/26/02)

1928 Jul 2, Britain enacted another Representation of the People Act granting women over 21 the same rights as men. British women over age 30 had voted since 1918.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.57)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage)(ON, 10/2010, p.9)

1928 Jul 21, Dame Ellen Terry (b.1847), British actress, died in England. In 2008 Michael Holroyd authored “A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families.” Her relationship with actor Henry Irving (d.1905) lasted over 2 decades.
(Econ, 8/30/08, p.79)(WSJ, 3/6/09, p.W6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry)

1928 Nov 22, British King George was confined to bed with congested lung; the queen was to take over duties.
(HN, 11/22/98)

1928 Radclyffe Hall (b.1880-1943) published "The Well of Loneliness," a novel intended as a cry about the plight of "congenital inverts," her term for lesbians. A Bow Street magistrate declared the novel to be obscene. It caused a big stir in England and a trial for obscenity. In 1999 Diana Souhami published "The Trials of Radclyffe Hall."
(SFEC, 8/8/99, BR p.1)(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radclyffe_Hall)
1928 The Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) was first published with over 414,000 entries. It was begun in 1879 and edited by Prof. James Murray (d.1915) with assistance from William Minor, an American ex-army surgeon. In 1998 Simon Winchester authored "The Professor and the Madman," the story behind the creation of the dictionary.
(WSJ, 9/14/98, p.A30)(SFEC, 10/18/98, BR p.7)(WSJ, 10/12/05, p.D13)
1928 Norman Angell (1872-1967), English journalist, made one venture into economics, when he invented a card game, described in “the Money Game” (1928). This was an attempt to explain matters such as deflation and inflation in visual terms which the ordinary person could understand.
(www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text160_p.html)
1928 John Spedan Lewis, son of the John Lewis, formed a partnership with the employees of the department store founded by his father. The business was founded in 1864 when John Lewis set up a draper's shop in Oxford Street, London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership)

1929 Feb 18, Leonard Cyril Deighton, English spy author (Ipcress File, Fighter), was born.
(AP, 2/18/01)(MC, 2/18/02)

1929 Mar 23, Roger Bannister England, 1st to run a 4 minute mile (May 6, 1954), was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)

1929 Apr 4, Sigmund Romberg's "New Moon" musical opened in London.
(MC, 4/4/02)

1929 Apr 26, First non-stop flight from England to India was completed.
(HN, 4/26/98)

1929 May 17, Edsel Ford cut the first sod of Ford's new British manufacturing plant in the Dagenham marshes. The first cars at Dagenham were produced in October, 1931. This was Ford’s first expansion outside the US.
(AP, 12/25/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Dagenham)

1929 Jun 7, John Turner, (L) 17th Canadian PM (1984), was born in Richmond, England.
(SC, 6/7/02)

1929 Sep 11, The San Francisco Bohemian Club honored Winston Churchill, former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain’s recently ousted Conservative government, at a luncheon.
(SFC, 9/10/04, p.F2)

1929 October 7, British PM J. Ramsay MacDonald delivered a speech to the US Congress. He first spoke briefly to the House of Representatives and then gave a longer speech to the Senate. MacDonald was the first British PM to address the US Congress.
(NY Times, 10/8/1929, p.3)

1929 Oct 11, Sean O'Casey's "Silver Tassle," premiered in London.
(MC, 10/11/01)

1929 Henry Green (1905-1973), English writer, authored “Living,” a novel of working class factory life.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Green)
1929 The labor party emerged from the general election as the largest party in Parliament. It had been founded 3 decades earlier.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1929 Egypt and Great Britain made an agreement on behalf of Britain's African colonies which gave Egypt the right to most of the more than 100 billion cubic meters of Nile water that reaches the downstream countries annually.
(AP, 4/14/10)

1930 Jan 21, An international arms meeting opened in London. The London Naval Conference, hosted by Britain, sought to establish naval disarmament and review the Washington Treaty of 1922, which limited tonnage of new battleships. After three months of meetings, representatives from Britain, the United States and Japan signed a treaty limiting battleship tonnage based on ratios between the nations. Italy and France declined to sign. A second naval conference in December 1935 did little to promote further disarmament and, by the beginning of World War II, Germany, Japan and the United States had all begun building battleships well over the limit of 35,000 tons stipulated by the original Washington Treaty. [see Apr 22]
(HN, 1/21/99)(HNQ, 1/1/01)

1930 Mar 7, Lord Snowdon, [Anthony Armstrong-Jones], photographer, was born in London.
(MC, 3/7/02)

1930 Mar 12, Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi began a 200-mile march to the sea to protest a British tax on salt. The march symbolized his defiance of British Rule over India.
(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)

1930 Mar 19, Arthur J. Balfour (81), British theologist, premier (1902-05), died.
(MC, 3/19/02)

1930 Mar 30, David Staple, joint president of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, was born.
(MC, 3/30/02)

1930 Apr 5, Mahatma Ghandi defied British law by making salt in India.
(HN, 5/5/97)

1930 Apr 21, Margaret Rose, Princess of York, was born in London, England.
(MC, 4/21/02)

1930 Apr 22, The United States, Britain and Japan signed the London Naval Treaty, which regulated submarine warfare and limited shipbuilding.
(AP, 4/22/97)

1930 Apr 29, Telephone connection England-Australia went into service.
(MC, 4/29/02)

1930 Apr 30, The Soviet Union proposed military alliance with France and Great Britain.
(HN, 4/30/98)

1930 Apr, In India Gandhi called for peaceful civil disobedience and the Indian National Congress issued a declaration of grievances against Britain.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)

1930 May 4, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested by the British.
(HN, 5/4/98)

1930 May 24, Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
(HN, 5/24/98)

1930 Jul 7, Arthur Conan Doyle (b.1859), British novelist, died. His work included 4 Sherlock Holmes mystery novels and 56 short stories about Holmes. Doyle was an eye doctor. In 1999 Daniel Stashower published "Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle." In 2007 Andrew Lycett authored “Conan Doyle: The Man who Created Sherlock Holmes.”
(SFEC, 6/13/99, Par p.12)(www.sherlockian.net/acd/)(ON, 3/06, p.12)(Econ, 10/6/07, p.98)

1930 Jul 27, David Hughes, English novelist (The Horsehair Sofa, The Man Who Invented Tomorrow), was born.
(HN, 7/27/01)

1930 Aug 16, Ted Hughes, English poet, was born.
(HN, 8/16/00)

1930 Aug 21, Princess Margaret Rose (d.2002) was born to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Glamis Castle, Scotland.
(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.A12)

1930 Sep 24, Noel Coward's comedy "Private Lives" opened in London starring Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself.
(HN, 9/24/00)

1930 Oct 10, Harold Pinter, British playwright (Homecoming, Servant), was born.
(HN, 10/10/98)(MC, 10/10/01)

1930 Oct 20, A British White Paper restricted Jews from buying Arab land.
(MC, 10/20/01)

1930 Oct 22, The 1st concert of BBC Symphony Orchestra was led by Adrian Boult.
(MC, 10/22/01)

1930 Nov 22, Peter Hall, British stage, film and opera director (Pedestrian), was born.
(MC, 11/22/01)

1930 Winston Churchill authored his autobiography "My Early Life."
(WSJ, 12/29/99, p.A12)
1930 J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), English novelist and playwright, authored his novel “Angel Pavement.”
(Econ, 6/30/12, p.85)
1930 Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), English writer, authored his novel “Vile Bodies.
(WSJ, 1/10/09, p.W8)

1930 Pioneer aviator Errol Boyd flew to London, becoming the first pilot to cross the North Atlantic outside the summer season. Erroll Boyd, born in Toronto in 1891, flew for the first time in 1912 as a passenger with American barnstormer Lincoln Beachey. Boyd enjoyed the experience so much that he decided on a career in aviation. Taught by aviator John Alcock during World War I, Boyd went on to a variety of jobs after the war including songwriting and managing a car rental business. However, Charles Lindbergh’s successful solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927 inspired Boyd to return to flying as a career.
(HNQ, 12/14/00)

1930 British detergent maker Lever Bros. merged with Margarine Unie of the Netherlands to form Unilever. William Hulme Lever (1888-1949), 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, co-founded Unilever. Lever brothers had operated from the Belgian Congo from 1911.
(www.ubffoodsolutions.com/company/history)(Econ, 6/30/12, p.20)

1930s During the 1930s, the Handley Page H.P.42 was the mainstay of government-subsidized Imperial Airways, linking commercial air routes throughout the British Empire. The prototype H.P.42, dubbed Hannibal, took off on its maiden flight on November 17, 1930 and soon had several variations to reach British possessions in Africa, the Middle East and India. Even when the sturdy, four-engine biplane was easily surpassed in speed by the 1930s, its luxuriousness rivaled ocean liners of the day. Despite its safety record and public affection, the H.P. 42 became more obsolete with the approach of World War II.
(HNQ, 1/11/01)

1931 Jan 29, Winston Churchill resigned as Stanley Baldwin's aide.
(HN, 1/29/99)

1931 Feb 11, Charles Algernon Parsons (76), British inventor (steam turbine), died.
(MC, 2/11/02)

1931 Feb 15, [Patricia] Claire Bloom, actress (Charly, Look Back in Anger), was born in London.
(MC, 2/15/02)

1931 Mar 5, Gandhi and British viceroy Lord Irwin signed a pact.
(MC, 3/5/02)

1931 Mar 10, British Labour party removed fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.
(MC, 3/10/02)

1931 Apr 20, British House of Commons agreed to sports play on Sunday.
(MC, 4/20/02)

1931 May 8, Franz Lehar's operetta, "Land of Smiles," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/8/02)

1931 Jun 9, Britain’s HMS Poseidon submarine sank during exercises of the coast of China. It was raised by the Chinese in 1972. In 2012 Steven Schwankert authored “The Real Poseidon Adventure: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine.”
(SFC, 8/4/12, p.A2)

1931 Jun 17, British authorities in China arrested Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
(HN, 6/17/98)

1931 Jun 26, Colin Henry Wilson, British author (The Outsider) , was born.
(HN, 6/26/01)

1931 Jul 4, James Joyce (22) married Nora Barnacle (20) in London. They legalized their 26-year common-law marriage at the Kensington Registry Office in London.
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.69)

1931 Aug 28, John Shirley-Quirk, baritone (Death in Venice), was born in Liverpool, England.
(MC, 8/28/01)

1931 Sep 12, Ian Holm, actor (Henry V), was born in Ilford, Essex, England.
(MC, 9/12/01)

1931 Sep 15, The British naval fleet mutinied at Invergordon over pay cuts.
(MC, 9/15/01)

1931 Sep 21, Britain went off the gold standard. The pound devalued 20%.
(AP, 9/21/97)(WSJ, 1/10/09, p.W8)

1931 Sep 24, Anthony Newley, actor (Dr Doolittle, Garbage Pail Kids, Stop the World) and composer, was born in England.
(MC, 9/24/01)

1931 Oct 10, William Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast," premiered in Leeds.
(MC, 10/10/01)

1931 Oct 13, Noel Coward's "Cavalcade," premiered in London.
(MC, 10/13/01)

1931 Oct 19, John Le Carré, British novelist who wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
(HN, 10/19/99)

1931 Nov 12, The Sibelius-Ashton ballet "Lady of Shalott," premiered in London.
(MC, 11/12/01)

1931 In London the Abbey Road recording studio was established at the former residence of an English nobleman.
(Sky, 9/97, p.53)
1931 British chancellor Philip Snowden (864-1937) put forth an emergency austerity budget with tax rises and spending cuts.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.77)
1931 Montagu Norman (1871-1950), governor of the Bank of England (1920-1944), proposed the creation of an international lender empowered to lend to governments and banks in need of capital. The idea was rejected by France and America.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.78)
1931 There was a mass trespass in England’s northern Peak District.
(SFC, 6/21/99, p.A7)
1931 Francis Ingall (d.1998 at 89) led his Lancers in a charge on horseback at the Battle of Karawal near the Khyber Pass against Afridi tribesmen. It was the final such attack by a regiment of the British Army. He later authored "The Last of the Bengal Lancers."
(SFC, 9/25/98, p.D4)

1931-1933 In 2007 it was reported that British scientists began conducting experiments in the early 1930s to determine whether mustard gas damaged Indians' skin more than British soldiers'. They went on for more than 10 years at a military site in Rawalpindi (later a part of Pakistan).
(AP, 9/1/07)

1932 Jan 21, Lytton Strachey (b.1880), author and part of the Bloomsbury group, died. He wrote "Eminent Victorians," a scandalous collection of sketches that revolutionized English biography in 1918. Michael Holdroyd later authored his biography. In 2005 Paul Levy edited “The Letters of Lytton Strachey.”
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.4)(WUD, 1994, p.1403)(SFEC, 3/5/00, DB p.4)(WSJ, 12/17/05, p.P13)

1932 Jan 22, British Anglicans merged with the Old-Catholic church.
(MC, 1/22/02)

1932 Apr 23, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre opened at Stratford-on-Avon. It replaced one built in 1879 that burned down in 1926.
(www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1740490,00.html)(Econ, 3/31/07, p.91)

1932 Apr 25, William Roache, actor (Ken Barlow-Coronation Street), was born in England.
(SS, 4/25/02)

1932 May 7, Jenny Joseph, English poet and novelist (The Thinking Heart, The Inland Sea), was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)

1932 May 9, Piccadilly Circus was lit by electricity.
(MC, 5/9/02)

1932 Mar 23, Britain warned Ireland that the loyalty oath was mandatory.
(HN, 3/23/98)

1932 Aug 22, BBS began experimental regular TV broadcasts.
(MC, 8/22/02)

1932 Aug 27-28, In England 200,000 textile workers went on strike.
(MC, 8/27/01)

1932 Oct 1, Oswald Mosley formed the British Union of Fascists.
(MC, 10/1/01)

1932 Dec 8, Gertrude Jekyll (b.1843), English gardener and writer, died.
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W16)(http://www.cix.co.uk/~museumgh/jekyll.htm)

1932 Dec 19, The British Broadcasting Corp. began transmitting overseas with its "Empire Service" to Australia.
(AP, 12/19/97)

1932 Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British fascist party. In 1936 he married Diana, one of the 5 Mitford daughters. In 2000 Jan Dalley authored "Diana Mosley."
(WSJ, 5/16/00, p.A24)

1932 A British team at Cambridge Univ. split the atom. Mark Oliphant (d.2000 at 98) was a member of the team at Cavendish Laboratory.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A22)

1933 Feb 9, The Oxford Union, Oxford University's debating society, endorsed, 275-153, a motion stating "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country," a pacifist stand widely denounced by Britons. [see Feb 9, 1983]
(AP, 2/9/00)

1933 Feb 26, Sir James Goldsmith (d.7/18/97), later financier and corporate raider (Referendum Party), was born in Paris to a Catholic French mother and a German Jewish father who later moved to Britain and served as a Conservative member of parliament.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.B6)(SC, 2/26/02)

1933 Mar 14, Michael Caine, [Maurice J. Micklewhite Jr.], actor (Alfie), was born in London.
(MC, 3/14/02)(SSFC, 2/9/03, Par p.4)
1933 Mar 14, Winston Churchill wanted to boost air defense.
(MC, 3/14/02)

1933 Apr 8, Manchester Guardian warned of unknown Nazi terror.
(MC, 4/8/02)

1933 Jun 12, The World Monetary and Economic Conference in London opened and had as its object the checking of the world depression by means of currency stabilization and economic agreements. Unbridgeable disagreements among the delegates from 64 nations and the attitude of the United States made the meeting a total failure.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Economic_Conference)(Econ, 3/28/09, p.65)

1933 Jul 13, David Storey, English novelist (The Sporting Life), was born.
(HN, 7/13/01)

1933 Aug 21, Dame Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano (Owen Wingrave), was born in York, England.
(SC, 8/21/02)

1933 Aug 28, For the first time, a BBC-broadcasted appeal was used by the police in tracking down a wanted man.
(HTnet, 8/28/99)

1933 Oct 9, Bill Tidy, English cartoonist (Fosdyke Saga), was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)

1933 Dec 8, Patrick Leigh Fermor (b.1915), London-born student, set off to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He later recounted his adventures in “A Time of Gifts” (1977) and “Between the Woods and the Water” (1986). He was later widely regarded as Britain’s greatest travel writer.
(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leigh_Fermor)

1933 Sir Norman Angell (1872-1967), English journalist, won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was knighted in 1931. From 1928-1931 he had served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell)
1933 Writer Eric Blair changed his name to George Orwell.
(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)
1933 Britain was still operating under the Ten Year Rule which imposed the assumption that the country would not be engaged in any great war for the next ten years and that no Expeditionary Force was required.
(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A22)
1933 British intelligence agents discovered that the Nazis were defying a ban on weapons imposed at Versailles.
(ON, 11/05, p.1)
1933 The first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was the radio-controlled “Fairey Queen” biplane. It was catapulted into the air and survived 2 hours of live fire from a British warship. In 1934 Britain’s Air Ministry ordered 420 such aircraft, known as the Queen Bee, which gave rise to the word drone to describe such aircraft.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.23)
1933 Harold Peto (b.1854), English architect and gardener, died. In 2007 Robin Halley authored “The Great Edwardian Gardens of Harold Peto.”
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W16)

1933-1937 In London, England, the huge Battersea Power Station was built on the Thames. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed the Battersea power station. [He also designed traditional red telephone boxes of London.] The station was decommissioned in 1982. In 1997 it was scheduled for a $2.2 billion redevelopment by Parkview Int’l.
(WSJ, 6/25/97, p.B12)(WSJ, 5/11/00, p.A24)(SSFC, 6/19/05, p.E5)

1934 Feb 10, A Jewish immigrant ship 1st broke the English blockade in Palestine.
(MC, 2/10/02)

1934 Feb 11, Mary Quant, fashion designer (Chelsea Look, Mod Look), was born in Kent, England.
(MC, 2/11/02)

1934 Feb 23, Edward William Elgar (76), English composer (Coronation Ode), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)

1934 Mar 26, Driving tests were introduced in Britain.
(SS, 3/26/02)

1934 Apr 3, Jane van Lawick-Goodall, ethologist (studied African chimps, 1974 Walker Prize), was born in London, England. She was a British anthropologist, known for her work with African chimpanzees. In 2000 her autobiography "Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters, The Early Years, 1934-1966," was edited by Dale Peterson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SFEC, 6/18/00, BR p.6)(SC, 3/4/02)(MC, 4/3/02)

1934 May 9, Alan Bennett, playwright, actor (Secret Policeman's Other Ball, Beyond the Fringe), was born in England.
(MC, 5/9/02)

1934 May 25, David J. Burke, writer, was born in Liverpool, England.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1934 May 25, Gustav Theodore Holst (59), English composer (Ode to Death), died.
(SC, 5/25/02)

1934 Jun 3, Dr. Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin, was knighted.
(MC, 6/3/02)

1834 Aug 1, England ended slavery in the West Indies slaves and all its Caribbean holdings effective on this date. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire with compensation to the owners. Some 35,000 salves were freed in the Cape Colony. [see 1833]
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)

1934 Sep 8, Peter Maxwell Davies, composer (Prolation, Taverner), was born in Manchester, England.
(MC, 9/8/01)

1934 Sep 19, Brian Epstein, rock manager (Beatles), was born.
(MC, 9/19/01)

1934 Sep 26, The British liner Queen Mary was launched. [see May 27, 1936]
(MC, 9/26/01)

1934 Oct 27, Frederick Barclay, British hotel magnate and multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 10/27/01)

1934 Nov 23, U.S. and Britain agreed on a 5-5-3 naval ratio with both countries allowed to build five million tons of naval ships while Japan can only build three; Japan denounced the treaty.
(HN, 11/23/98)

1934 Nov 28, Churchill made a speech in Parliament and warned of German aircraft bombing London.
(ON, 11/05, p.2)

1934 Dec 9, Judi Dench, actress (Henry V, Wetherby), was born in York, England.
(MC, 12/9/01)

1934 Constant Lambert (1905-1951), British composer and conductor, authored “Music Ho: A Study of Music in Decline.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_Lambert)
1934 Sir Lawrence van der Post (1906-1996) wrote his first book "In a Province."
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.B4)
1934 Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), English writer, authored “Ninety-Two Days.” It was based on his 1932 travels in Brazil and British Guiana.
(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.W8)

1935 Feb 16, Brian Bedford, actor (Anthony-Coronet Blue), was born in England.
(MC, 2/16/02)

1935 Mar 13, Driving tests were introduced in Great Britain.
(MC, 3/13/02)

1935 Mar 23, France, Italy and Britain agreed to present a unified front in response to Germany.
(HN, 3/23/98)

1935 Mar 30, Britain and Russia agreed on treaties intended to curb the power of the Reich.
(HN, 3/30/98)

1935 Apr 10, Vaughan Williams' 4th Symphony premiered in London.
(MC, 4/10/02)

1935 Apr 19, Dudley Moore (d.2002), film actor, comedian and musician, was born in Dagenham, East London.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A15)

1935 May 6, British King George & Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee.
(MC, 5/6/02)

1935 May 19, Colonel Thomas E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, died 6 days after sustaining head injuries in a motorcycle accident on a Dorset, England, country road. Lawrence served the British Foreign Office as liaison officer during the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I. His leadership and sympathetic understanding of the Arabs were instrumental in Allied General Edmund Allenby's conquest of Palestine in 1917. Bitterly disappointed by the 1919 Paris Peace Conference's refusal to mandate Arab independence, Lawrence resigned from the Foreign Office in 1922 to write books about his Middle East experiences. In 2011 Michael Korda authored “Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.”
(HNPD, 5/19/99)(AP, 5/19/08)(Econ, 4/30/11, p.90)

1935 May 22, Stanley Baldwin, Britain’s former PM, admitted that his estimation of Germany’s Luftwaffe strength was wrong.
(ON, 11/05, p.2)

1935 Jun 1, Driving test and license plates were introduced in England.
(DTnet 6/1/97)

1935 Jun 7, In Britain after the resignation of PM MacDonald, King George V appointed Stanley Baldwin Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.
(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)

1935 Jul 30, The 1st Penguin book was published in England and started the paperback revolution. The sixpenny books made a 1st blow to the library system.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E1)(MC, 7/30/02)(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)

1935 Nov 1, T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral," premiered in London.
(MC, 11/1/01)

1935 Nov 3, Jeremy Brett, actor (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), was born in Berkswell, England.
(MC, 11/3/01)

1935 Nov 13, Anti-British riots took place in Egypt.
(MC, 11/13/01)

1935 Sir Michael Tippett, British composer, composed his initial work "First String Quartet."
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)

1935 The Ramblers Association began and campaigned for access to roam on privately held lands.
(SFC, 6/21/99, p.A7)

1935 Melita Norwood (23) a clerk at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association was recommended to the NKVD by Andrew Rothstein, one of the founders of the British Communist Party. Norwood served as a Russian spy, "Hola," until she retired in 1972 and her role was not made public until KGB files, brought to London in 1992 by Vasili Mitrokhin, were made public in 1999 in "The Mitrokhin Archive."
(SFEC, 9/12/99, p.A16)(SFC, 12/21/99, p.C8)

1935 Henry Grunfeld (d.1999), a German Jewish refugee, teamed with fellow refugee Siegmund Warburg (d.1982) to establish the New Trading Co., an investment banking house that became known as S.G. Warburg in 1946. Swiss Bank acquired the firm in 1995.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.B4)

1935 Penguin introduced the first paperback books in England.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E1)

1935 In Britain Stanley Ballwin regained the premiership for a 3rd time.
(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)

1935-1936 The Chinese Imperial art collection was exhibited at Burlington House, the Royal Academy of Art.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, DB p.37)

1935-1994 Dennis Potter, BBC writer. In 1999 W. Stephen Gilbert published "The Life and Work of Dennis Potter." Also published was "Dennis Potter: Seeing the Blossom: Two Interviews and a Lecture.
(SFEC, 1/24/99, BR p.1)

1936 Jan 15, In London, Japan quit all naval talks after being denied equality.
(HN, 1/15/99)

1936 Jan 18, Author Rudyard Kipling (70) died in Burwash, England. His work included "Plain Tales from the Hills," "Barrack-Room Ballads," and the novel "Kim." In 2000 Harry Ricketts authored the biography "Rudyard Kipling: A Life." In 2009 Charles Allen authored “Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling 1865-1900.”
(AP, 1/18/00)(WSJ, 3/30/00, p.A28)(WSJ, 3/14/09, p.W8)

1936 Jan 20, Britain's King George V, served from 1910-1936, died at age 70; he was succeeded by Edward VIII. He is remembered for saying: "Any man who is not a socialist before he is 30 has no heart, and any man who is a socialist after he is 30 has no head."
(AP, 1/20/98)(MC, 1/20/02)(WSJ, 7/16/02, p.D6)

1936 Mar 5, A prototype Type 300 Spitfire made it's 1st flight at the Eastleigh Aerodrome in Southampton, England.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)

1936 Mar 25, Britain, the U.S. and France signed a naval accord in London.
(HN, 3/24/98)

1936 Mar 29, Richard Rodney Bennett, composer, was born in Broadstairs, Kent, England.
(MC, 3/29/02)

1936 May 9, Glenda Jackson, actress (Women in Love), was born in Cheshire, England.
(MC, 5/9/02)

1936 Mar 30, Britain announced a naval construction program of 38 warships. This was the largest construction program in 15 years.
(HN, 3/30/98)

1936 May 9, Albert Finney, actor, was born in Salford, UK. He starred in "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Tom Jones."
(HN, 5/9/99)(MC, 5/9/02)

1936 May 27, The Cunard liner Queen Mary left Southampton, England, for NY on its maiden voyage. In 1968 it became a 365-room hotel moored at Long Beach, Ca.
(AP, 5/27/97)(MC, 5/27/02)(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.C1)

1936 Jun 3, Britain’s Air Ministry placed a £1.25 million order for 310 Spitfire fighters.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)

1936 Jun 14, G.K. Chesterton (b.1874), English poet-essayist, died at his home in Beaconsfield, England. His poems included “The Secret People” (1915). As president of the Distributist League, he promoted the idea that private property should be divided into smallest possible freeholds and then distributed throughout society.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.51)(www.online-literature.com/chesterton/)

1936 Aug 26, The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, calling for most British troops to leave Egypt, except those guarding the Suez Canal, was signed in Montreux, Switzerland. It was abrogated by Egypt in 1951.
(AP, 8/26/05)

1936 Sep 25-1936 Oct 13, The Tripartite Agreement between the US, the UK, and France established that the subscribing nations agree to buy and sell gold freely with each other in exchange for their own currency.
(www.reserveasset.gold.org/monetary_history/key_documents/after/)

1936 Sep 30, Pinewood Studios opened in Buckinghamshire England.
(MC, 9/30/01)

1936 Nov 2, The first high-definition public television transmissions began from Alexandra Palace in north London by the BBC.
(HN, 11/2/98)(MC, 11/2/01)

1936 Nov 27, Great Britain’s Anthony Eden warned Hitler that Britain would fight to protect Belgium.
(HN, 11/27/98)

1936 Nov 30, London's famed Crystal Palace, constructed for the International Exhibition of 1851, was destroyed in a fire.
(AP, 11/30/97)

1936 Dec 10, Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American born divorcee. [see Dec 11]
(HN, 12/10/98)

1936 Dec 11, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. Edward VIII had been king of Great Britain and Ireland for less than a year when he abdicated the throne to marry "the woman I love,"--the twice-divorced American Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson. The eldest child of King George V and Queen Mary, Edward met the Baltimore-born Mrs. Simpson in 1931 while she was still married to her second husband. Their relationship caused much consternation among British traditionalists since the Church of England forbade divorced persons to remarry and would not recognize a marriage between Edward and Mrs. Simpson. After his ascension to the throne on January 20, 1936, Edward VIII expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson and, if he could not do so and remain king, he said he was "prepared to go." After his abdication, Edward was awarded the title Duke of Windsor by his brother, King George VI. Edward and Mrs. Simpson were married in June 1937.
(HFA, ‘96, p.44)(WUD, 1994, p. 454)(AP, 12/11/97)(HNPD, 12/11/98)

1936 John Maynard Keynes, English economist, published "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." It taught that the classic model of Adam Smith was a special case and only applied in times of full employment. At other times he asserted that the economy needed a large and activist government to steer it on the road of full employment. He advised governments to increase money supply to overcome Depression. His theories played a part in Roosevelt's New Deal which helped revive the US economy.
(WSJ, 10/9/97, p.A18)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)

1936 Agatha Christie authored her novel “Murder in Mesopotamia.” During the 1930s she accompanied her husband Max Mallowan, British archeologist, on excavations in southern Iraq and later wrote an account of their work titled “Come Tell Me How You Live” (1946).
(MT, summer 2003, p.12)
1936 Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) wrote his play "French Without Tears."
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.E3)

1936 London’s Gatwick Airport opened. It featured direct rail to London, a round terminal on a circular island in the airfield, and could service 6 planes simultaneously.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.B1)
1936 England tried out automatic teller machines (ATMs) but they could only be used for cash deposits.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p. E3)
1936 James Lees-Milne (1908-1997), British architectural historian, was appointed the National Trust’s first Country Houses secretary. He began publishing his diaries in the 1970s.
(WSJ, 7/1/06, p.P6)
1936 Attendance to greyhound racing peaked in Britain at about 38 million.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.74)

1937 Feb 22, Samuel Whitbread, English brewer, multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 2/22/02)

1937 Feb 26, C. Isherwood and W.H. Auden's "Ascent of F6" premiered in London.
(SC, 2/26/02)

1937 Apr 1, Aden became a British colony.
(OTD)

1937 Apr 13, Edward Fox, actor (M-Never Say Never Again, The Day of the Jackal), was born in London, England.
(MC, 4/13/02)

1937 May 12, The Duke of York was crowned Britain's King George VI at Westminster Abbey.
(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.40)(AP, 5/12/97)

1937 May 28, Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain. Stanley Baldwin had nominated Neville Chamberlain as his successor and tendered his resignation.
(AP, 5/28/97)(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)

1937 Jun 3, The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson in Monts, France. In 2003 secret police records revealed that Simpson was also having an affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, a used car salesman.
(AP, 6/3/97)(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A10)

1937 Jun 8, In Britain Stanley Baldwin accepted an earldom and retired from politics.
(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)

1937 Jun 11, Reginald Joseph Mitchell (b.1895), British aeronautical engineer and chief designer of the Spitfire fighter, died of cancer.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)

1937 Jun 21, Wimbledon was televised for the first time.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)

1937 Jul 3, Tom Stoppard, British author and dramatist, was born in Czechoslovakia as Tomas Strassler. His plays include "Rosencrantz and Gilderstern are Dead" and "The Real Thing." His family soon fled the Nazis to Singapore. In 2002 Ira Nadel authored the biography "Tom Stoppard: A Life."
(HN, 7/3/99)(MC, 7/3/02)(SSFC, 9/1/02, p.M5)

1937 Jul 9, David Hockney, painter, was born in Bradford, England. He moved to LA in 1978.
(HN, 7/9/01)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.B3)

1937 Jul 20, Don Budge (22), American tennis player, defeated Baron Gottfried von Cram (28) of Germany at Wimbledon in a semi-final round to see who would face England. James Thurber later described the Budge-Cramm five-set marathon as “the greatest match in the history of the world.”
(WSJ, 4/25/09, p.W8)

1937 Sep 15, Prime Minister of England Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to discuss the future of Czechoslovakia with Adolf Hitler.
(HN, 9/15/99)

1937 Oct 9, Brian Blessed, English actor (King Arthur, High Road to China, Hamlet, Henry V), was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)

1937 Nov 17, Peter Edward Cook, actor, comedian (Beyond the Fringe, Bedazzled), was born in Torquay, England.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1937 Nov 17, Britain's Lord Halifax visited Germany and marked the beginning of appeasement.
(MC, 11/17/01)

1937 Dec 3, Stephen Rubin, English attorney and shoe manufacturer (Reebok, Adidas), was born.
(MC, 12/3/01)

1937 Dec 23, London warned Rome to stop the anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
(HN, 12/23/98)

1937 Ronald Coase (b.1910), British economist, authored “The Nature of the Firm.”
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.134)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase)
1937 George Orwell (1903-1950) authored "The Road to Wigan Pier." The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay of his upbringing, and the development of his political conscience. It marked his 1st disagreement with mainstream Socialists.
(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier)
1937 J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), English novelist and playwright, authored his play “Time and the Conways.” It illustrated J. W. Dunne's Theory Of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of roughly 20 years from 1919 to 1937.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Priestley)
1937 The film "Fire Over England" starred Flora Robson, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. It was about events surrounding the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, DB p.45)
1937 England’s King Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, abdicated to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson. [Chronicle says 1936]
(Hem., 8/96, p.21)(SFC, 12/4/96, p.C3)
1937 Burma was made a crown colony of Britain.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)

1938 Feb 13, Oliver Reed, actor (Big Sleep), was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/13/02)

1938 Feb 17, The first Baird color TV was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London. [see Dec 20]
(HN, 2/17/01)(MC, 2/17/02)

1938 Feb 20, Anthony Eden (1897-1977) resigned as British foreign secretary in a dispute with PM Neville Chamberlain. He said Chamberlain was appeasing Germany.
(www.bartleby.com/67/1852.html)

1938 Feb 27, Britain and France recognized the Franco government in Spain.
(MC, 2/27/02)

1938 Jul 20, Diana Rigg, actress (Emma Peel-Avengers, Hospital), was born in Doncaster, England.
(MC, 7/20/02)

1938 Jul 21, Paul Hindemith & Leonide Massines ballet premiered in London.
(MC, 7/21/02)

1938 Aug 3, Terry "5 Wigs" Wogan, British talk show host (Irish Days), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)

1938 Sep 10, Charles Cruft, (.b1852), English founder of the Crufts dog show (1886), died. He was the general manager of James Spratt dog biscuits and founded the show as a vehicle to market.
(AP, 9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crufts)

1938 Sep 17, British premier Neville Chamberlain left Munich.
(MC, 9/17/01)

1938 Sep 20, Emlyn Williams’ "Corn is Green," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/20/01)

1938 Sep 21, Winston Churchill condemned Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 9/21/01)

1938 Sep 23, British premier Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich.
(MC, 9/23/01)

1938 Sep 29, British, French, German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking minority. The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other powers: the Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district was given to Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary. British PM Neville Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from Hitler at Munich and without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi forces could occupy Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy" as the decisive event of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace in our time." French PM Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the meeting. In 1980 Telford Taylor published "Munich: The Price of Peace." It is a detailed political & diplomatic history of the 1930's in Europe, culminating in the Munich conference. Taylor later helped write the rules for Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan authored “Battle for the Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich Crises.”
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC, 6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP, 9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)

1938 Sep 30, A day after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, "I believe it is peace for our time."
(AP, 9/30/06)

1938 Sep, The first workable British radar system, called the Chain Home, started operation. By December Great Britain had five radar stations along its coasts to warn of enemy aircraft and over a dozen more were under construction. Fearing future wars where aircraft, especially bombers, could threaten Britain, the government pressed engineers to pursue radar research, beginning in 1935. Many other nations, including the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan, were busy with their own experiments with radar.
(HNQ, 1/3/01)

1938 Oct 22, Derek Jacobi, actor (Lanner-Strauss Family, Dead Again), was born in London.
(MC, 10/22/01)

1938 The BBC began its first foreign language service, an Arabic radio service.
(WSJ, 1/13/00, p.A19)(WSJ, 1/19/02, p.B1)(Econ, 10/29/05, p.57)

1938 British expatriates in Kuala Lumpur converted a hunting tradition to a drinking and running event called Hashing, named in reference to the bad food at the Selangar Club, where they hung out.
(SFC, 8/11/00, WBb p.7)

1838-1923 John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn, English journalist: "The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart."
(AP, 8/13/98)

1939 Feb 28, Great Britain recognized the Franco regime in Spain. [see Feb 27, 1938]
(MC, 2/28/02)

1939 Mar 2, Howard Carter, archeologist, died in London at age 62. He led the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922.
(ON, 5/00, p.8)

1939 Mar 31, Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven French islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)

1939 Apr 6, Great Britain and Poland signed a military pact.
(MC, 4/6/02)

1939 Apr 12, Alan Ayckbourn, playwright, was born in London.
(MC, 4/12/02)

1939 May 17, Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived in Quebec on the first visit to Canada by reigning British sovereigns.
(AP, 5/17/99)

1939 May 19, Churchill signed British-Russian anti-Nazi pact.
(DTnet 5/19/97)

1939 May 23, British parliament planned to make Palestine independent by 1949.
(MC, 5/23/02)

1939 May 25, Ian McKellen, actor (Keep, Plenty, Scarlet Pimpernel), was born in England.
(SC, 5/25/02)

1939 Jun 1, Submarine Thetis: sank in Liverpool Bay, England; 99 perished.
(DTnet 6/1/97)

1939 Jun 5, Margaret Drabble, English novelist (The Millstone, The Realms of Gold), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)

1939 Jun 11, King & Queen of England tasted their 1st "hot dogs" at FDR's party.
(SC, 6/11/02)

1939 Jun 28, Richard Meinertzhagen (1877-1967, a British army colonel, met with Adolf Hitler to plead on behalf of the Jews in Germany. He later claimed to have smuggled a pistol into the chancellery but lost his nerve and failed to shoot Hitler. In 2007 Brian Garfield authored “The Meinertzhagen Mystery.”
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P9)

1939 Jun, In Britain 50 letter bombs exploded in postboxes and post offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. The IRA claimed responsibility as part of their S-Plan campaign.
(Econ, 11/6/10, p.74)

1939 Jul 8, Henry Havelock Ellis (80), English sexologist (Man & Woman), died.
(MC, 7/8/02)

1939 Jul 26, The London Times reported the discovery of a buried ship and other artifacts at Sutton Hoo. Archeologist later suspected that it was an empty grave and memorial for a 7th century Anglo-Saxon chief.
(ON, 4/03, p.10)

1939 Aug 25, Britain and France signed a treaty with Poland promising military assistance should the Germans invade.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)

1939 Sep 3, British envoy Sir Neville Henderson delivered Britain’s final ultimatum to the Reich’s Foreign Ministry.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1939 Sep 3, The British passenger ship Athenia was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30 Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.
(HN, 9/3/98)

1939 Sep 6, The 1st WW II German air attack on Great Britain took place.
(MC, 9/6/01)

1939 Sep 11, British submarine Triton torpedoed British submarine Oxley.
(MC, 9/11/01)

1939 Sep 14, British fleet sank the German U-39 U-boat.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)

1939 Sep 17, The German U-29 sank the British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 died.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)

1939 Sep 19, The British Expeditionary Force reached France.
(MC, 9/19/01)

1939 Sep 20, After sinking trawlers off the northern Hebrides, German U-27 was located and sunk by destroyers "Fortune" and "Forester."
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)

1939 Sep 23, Sigmund Freud (b.1856), founder of psychoanalysis, died in London. He had escaped from Vienna in 1938. His work “Moses and Monotheism” was published this year. In 1986 Frederick Crews, a skeptic on Freud's work, published "Skeptical Engagements." Crews also published "The memory wars: Freud's Legacy in dispute" and "Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend." Freud's last days were dramatized in 1999 by Terry Johnson in the play "Hysteria."
(SFEM, 1/10/99, p.4)(AP, 9/23/99)(WSJ, 12/23/99, p.A16)

1939 Oct 1, Churchill called the Soviets a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
(MC, 10/1/01)

1939 Oct 4, Pamela Churchill Harriman married Randolph Churchill, son of Winston. She was later appointed by Pres. Clinton as ambassador to France. In 1996 Sally Bedell Smith wrote her biography: "Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman."
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.E6)(SFC, 2/6/97, p.A14)

1939 Oct 14, The German U-47, commanded by Kapitan Gunther Prien, sank the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, Scotland, and 833 people were killed. This prompted Churchill to order the creation of concrete barriers at the eastern entrance of Scapa Flow.
(SFEM, 10/10/99, p.49)(http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hoy/scapa/)

1939 Oct 21, As war heated up with Germany, the British war cabinet held its first meeting in the underground war room in London.
(HN, 10/21/99)

1939 Oct 28, A Spitfire shot down a German Heinkel-111 over Scotland.
(MC, 10/28/01)

1939 Oct 30, German U boat failed in an attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill, Dudley Pound and Charles Forbes aboard.
(MC, 10/30/01)

1939 Nov 9, In the Venlo-incident, German Abwehr killed 2 English agents.
(MC, 11/9/01)

1939 Nov 18, The Irish Republican Army exploded three bombs in Picadilly Circus.
(HN, 11/18/98)

1939 Nov 25, Nazis reported four British ships sunk in the North Sea, but London denied the report.
(HN, 11/25/98)

1939 Nov, In Birmingham John Randall invented the cavity magnetron. It was a microwave transmitter 1000 times more powerful than any other at the time.
(Wired, 2/98, p.134)

1939 Dec 2, British Imperial Airways and British Airways merged to form BOAC.
(MC, 12/2/01)

1939 Dec 6, Britain agreed to send arms to Finland.
(HN, 12/6/98)

1939 Dec 13, In the Battle at La Plata 3 British cruisers fought the German "pocket battleship," Graf Spee, which took refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. The following day, the badly damaged ship left port, deliberately ran aground in the bay, where the officers led the crew in scuttling and exploding the Graf Spee. Two days later, the commander of the German warship committed suicide in his Buenos Aires hotel room. Today, at low tide, water commuters between Buenos Aires and Montevideo can see part of the superstructure breaking the surface. [see Dec 17,18]
(MC, 12/13/01)

1939 Dec 17, In the Battle of River Plate near Montevideo, Uruguay, the British trapped the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. German Captain Langsdorf sank his ship believing that resistance was hopeless. [see Dec 13,18]
(AP, 12/17/97)(HN, 12/17/98)

1939 Dec 18, The Graf Spee was scuttled. A ferocious sea battle off the coast of South America between the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the British ships Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles, preceded the scuttling. The German captain Hans Langsdorf, later killed himself. On the 13th, heavily the armed German ship held off the three vessels for three hours, sustaining some damage, and then fled into the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. Over the next few days the British tricked the Germans into believing that a large British fleet had them trapped.
(MC, 12/18/01)

1939 Dec 23, The first Canadian troops arrived in Britain.
(HN, 12/23/98)

1939 E.H. Carr, British scholar, authored “The Twenty Years’ Crises: 1919-1939.” It became a seminal work on the realism that instructed US and British Cold War statesmen.
(WSJ, 12/29/07, p.W8)
1939 Britain’s Ministry of Information crafted a poster with the injunction “Keep Calm and Carry On” to raise the morale of the British public in the case of invasion.
(Econ, 10/9/10, p.82)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On)
1939 Nicholas Winton (b.1909), English stockbroker, saved 669 Jewish children by organizing train transport from Prague to London at the outbreak of World War II. In 2007 the Czech Rep. awarded Sir Nicholas Winton (98) the Cross of Merit of the 1st class for saving the children. In 2001 the biography, “Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation,” by Muriel Emmanuel and Vera Gissing was published. The documentary film “Nicholas J Winton - the Power of Good,” was shown in September 2001 in Prague, where Sir Nicholas met 250 of those he saved.
(AP, 10/9/07)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Winton.html)

1939-1945 Winston Churchill authorized bribes of some $100 million to Spanish military leaders to keep Spain out of the war.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A10)
1939-1945 Johnnie Johnson (d.2001 at 85), fighter pilot and leading Allied air ace, shot down 38 German planes. In 1956 he authored the autobiography "Wing Leader."
(SFC, 2/2/01, p.D7)
1939-1945 Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke served as Britain’s military chief of staff for much of WW II. In 2001 Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman edited his "War Diaries 1939-1945."
(SSFC, 8/12/01, DB p.62)
1939-1945 Much of what happened at Bletchley Park remains as mysterious today as when the 581-acre Buckinghamshire estate became the center for an unprecedented technological offensive against Hitler’s encrypted military communications. Under the code name Ultra, cryptologists at Bletchley intercepted and decoded confidential German radio signals, including the supposedly unbreakable Enigma code, the primary method the German armed forces use to encrypt radio dispatches.
(HNQ, 6/22/01)
1939-1945 Improvised from a bomber, the twin engine Bristol Beaufighter was the most heavily armed Allied fighter of World War II, the Beaufighter was one of the finest multi-role combat aircraft to see service during that conflict.
(HNQ, 2/26/02)

1939-1962 A drinking club called "The Inklings" gathered every Tuesday at "The Eagle and Child" public house in Oxford, England. Members included CS Lewis, Charles Williams, JRR Tolkien and others.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.B12)

1940 Jan 8, Britain began rationing sugar, meat and butter.
(HN, 1/8/99)

1940 Jan 10, German planes attacked 12 ships off the British coast; three sank and 35 were dead.
(HN, 1/10/99)

1940 Feb 8, Ted Koppel, American television journalist, was born in Lancashire, England, as Edward James Koppel. His family came to the United States in 1953, and he was naturalized as a US citizen in 1963.
(http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Koppel-9368366)

1940 Feb 12, The USSR signed a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
(HN, 2/12/97)

1940 Feb 14, Britain announced that all merchant ships would be armed.
(HN, 2/14/98)

1940 Feb 16, The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescue British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
(HN, 2/16/99)

1940 Feb 28, The Superliner Queen Elizabeth was launched in Britain. It was retired in 1968 and destroyed by a fire in Hong Kong harbor.
(HN, 2/28/98)(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.C1)

1940 Mar 3, A Nazi air raid killed 108 on a British liner in the English Channel.
(HN, 3/3/99)

1940 Mar 5, The British surprised Mussolini by taking seven Italian coal ships.
(HN, 3/5/98)

1940 Mar 14, Rita Tushingham, actress (Green Eyes, Dr Zhivago), was born in Liverpool, England.
(MC, 3/14/02)

1940 Mar 16, Germany launched an air raid on British fleet base at Scapa Flow.
(MC, 3/16/02)

1940 Mar 20, The British RAF conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
(HN, 3/20/98)

1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1940 May 21, British tank forces attacked General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.
(HN, 5/21/99)

1940 Mar 25, The US agreed to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
(HN, 3/24/98)

1940 Apr 8, German battle cruisers sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1940 Apr 8, British troops landed at Narwik to mine Norway’s territorial waters.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)

1940 Apr 10, The HMS Hunter, a British destroyer, went down with 110 men in the fist Battle of Narvik as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces from overrunning a strategic Norwegian port. Germany lost 4 destroyers in the battle. In 2008 a Norwegian minehunter found the wreck
(AP, 3/9/08)

1940 Apr 15, French and British troops landed at Narvik, Norway.
(HN, 4/15/98)

1940 Apr 29, Norwegian King Haakon and government fled to England.
(MC, 4/29/02)

1940 May 4, Commander Rupert Lonsdale (d.1999 at 93) took his submarine, the Seal, into the Kattegat Strait between Denmark and Sweden, to place mines in the German shipping lanes. One mine exploded and sent the vessel to the bottom. They managed to refloat after 23 hours and Lonsdale (35) surrendered the ship and 59 weary crewmen to a German seaplane. Aside from a few coastal craft and abandoned ships, the Seal was the only British warship to fall into enemy hands during WW II.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A17)

1940 May 5, Norwegian government in exile formed in London.
(MC, 5/5/02)

1940 May 7-1940 May 8, The British House of Commons debated the disastrous Norwegian campaign.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Debate)

1940 May 8, British PM Neville Chamberlain resigned.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7nhtr)

1940 May 10, Winston Churchill took office as PM. Churchill formed a new government and served as the Conservative head of a coalition government with the opposition Labor Party. The debate over the Norway campaign led directly to Churchill replacing Chamberlain.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)(PCh, 1992, p.864)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.67)
1940 May 10, British Local Defense Volunteers, the Home Guard, formed.
(MC, 5/10/02)

1940 May 13, In his first speech as prime minister of Britain, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
(AP, 5/13/97)
1940 May 13, British bombed a factory at Breda, Netherlands.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 13, Dutch Queen Wilhelmina fled to England.
(MC, 5/13/02)

1940 May 14, British and French forces began a general retreat from Belgium, heading southwest toward France.
(ON, 12/12, p.1)

1940 May 20, British Admiral Bertram H. Ramsay met with his staff beneath Dover Castle to draw up a formal plan for the evacuation of British and French forces from Dunkirk. The plan was called “Operation Dynamo.”
(ON, 8/12, p.2)

1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk. British and French forces staged a counterattack near Arras, but failed to clear a path to Le Havre.
(HN, 5/21/98)(ON, 8/12, p.2)

1940 May 24, Hitler ordered a halt to his forces converging on Dunkirk and the British, who were backed to the sea. This event and the next 4 days were described in the 1999 book: "Five Days in London, May 1940" by John Lukacs.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A48)

1940 May 20, Gen. Guderian's British expeditionary army tanks reached The Channel.
(MC, 5/20/02)

1940 May 22, Premier Winston Churchill flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/22/02)

1940 May 26, Operation Dynamo was launched for the evacuation of British, French and Belgian soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France. The German Luftwaffe launched a bombing campaign on the harbor of Dunkirk. The new British Spitfire fighters helped provide air cover. The operation continued to June 4.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)(AP, 5/26/97)(ON, 8/12, p.2)

1940 May 28, During the evacuation at Dunkirk a Germany torpedo boat sank the HMS Wakeful sending over 700 men to their deaths. A Germany submarine hit the destroyer HMS Grafton killing 35 army officers. Other British destroyers mistook the British drifter Comfort for an enemy torpedo boat and killed all but 5 men aboard. The Queen of the Channel was hit by Germany bombs. Most of the 950 soldiers on board were transferred to a rescue ship before the ferry went down.
(ON, 8/12, p.3)

1940 May 29, The German air force launched massive attacks on the harbor at Dunkirk. A British destroyer and 6 of the biggest merchant ships in the harbor were sunk.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)

1940 May 31, British General Bernard Montgomery left Dunkirk. The French government allowed French soldiers to be picked up at Dunkirk.
(MC, 5/31/02)(ON, 8/12, p.4)
1940 May 31, Winston Churchill flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/31/02)

1940 May, Winston Churchill faced down the apostles of appeasement in his War Cabinet. In 2000 John Lukacs authored "Five Days in London, May 1940," which told of struggle in the English cabinet.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.8)

1940 Jun 1, German air attacks at Dunkirk sank 31 vessels and damaged 11. The HMS Worcester limped back to Dover with 340 dead and 400 wounded. By midnight 64,429 men were landed safely in England.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)

1940 Jun 2, Britain’s Operation Dynamo save 26,256 men from Dunkirk.
(ON, 8/12, p.4)

1940 Jun 4, The Allied military evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended. Operation Dynamo counted 235 vessels lost as well as 177 aircraft in combat at Dunkirk and the English Channel. French defenders surrendered. Some 30-40,000 French troops became prisoners of war.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(ON, 8/12, p.4)

1940 Jun 10, Italy declared war on France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
(AP, 6/10/97)

1940 Jun 18, During World War Two, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged his countrymen to conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to say, "This was their finest hour."
(AP, 6/18/00)

1940 Jul 3, British Royal Navy sank a French fleet in North Africa, ten days after France had signed an armistice with Nazi Germany.
(MC, 7/3/02)

1940 Jul 4, British destroyed French battle fleet at Oran, Algeria, 1267 died.
(Maggio)

1940 Jul 5, During World War II, Britain and Marshal Henri Petain's Vichy government in France broke diplomatic relations.
(AP, 7/5/97)(HN, 7/5/98)

1940 Jul 7, Ringo Starr, drummer for the Beatles, was born. He went on to a solo career and acting.
(HN, 7/7/99)

1940 Jul 10, During World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By October 31, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses. Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937), the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book "The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(AP, 7/10/97)(ON, 3/07, p.2)(ExH, 3/23/98)

1940 Jul 10-1940 Oct 31, The Battle of Britain in July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly decisive campaign (not just a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe gathered over 2,500 combat planes for a bombing campaign that would be a prelude to "Operation Sea Lion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air Marshall Hugh C. Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could muster about 650 decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The Luftwaffe came perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at about that time, a German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London, Churchill bombed Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack from the R.A.F. to London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The Luftwaffe’s bombers carried too small a bomb load for a strategic bombing campaign and were inadequately armed to defend themselves against R.A.F. fighters. The Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the range to provide sufficient escort for the bombers, which were massacred by Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Germans knew that the British radar installations existed, and did launch some attacks upon them, but never realized how vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F. fighters to intercept raiding aircraft. In 1969 the film “Battle of Britain” starred Laurence Olivier as Hugh C. Dowding. In 2010 James Holland authored “The Battle of Britain: Five Months That Changed History.”
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.93)

1940 Jul 13, Patrick Stewart, actor (Picard-Star Trek Next Generation), was born in England.
(MC, 7/13/02)

1940 Jul 19, Hitler ordered Great Britain to surrender.
(MC, 7/19/02)

1940 Jul 23, German bombers began the "Blitz," the all-night air raids on London.
(MC, 7/23/02)

1940 Jul 30, A bombing lull ended the first phase of the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 7/30/98)

1940 Aug 7, Churchill recognized the De Gaulle government in exile.
(MC, 8/7/02)

1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)

1940 Aug 11, 38 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1940 Aug 11, Italian forces attacked Observation Hill in British Somaliland. Capt. Wilson and Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range. The enemy finally overran the post at 5 p.m. on the 15th August when Capt. Wilson, fighting to the last, was reportedly killed. 2 months later he was awarded a Victoria Cross. In April 1941, however, Wilson was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson died at age 96 on Dec 23, 2008.
(AP, 12/30/08)

1940 Aug 12, Luftwaffe bombed British radar stations and lost 31 aircraft.
(MC, 8/12/02)

1940 Aug 13, Der Adler Tag (Eagle Day) was the name given to the day the German Luftwaffe launched an all-out offensive against the Royal Air Force and the British aircraft industry in southern England. With this action, Adolf Hitler hoped to knock out any aerial resistance to his planned invasion of the British Isles. RAF fighter pilots successfully held off the numerically superior Luftwaffe, in spite of the loss of 415 pilots out of a force of 1,500.
(HNPD, 8/13/98)

1940 Aug 15, In the largest–scale raids in the history of aerial warfare, hundreds of Germany planes struck against London and its suburbs. Hitler’s planned Operation Sea Lion was to have commenced on this day. However it was cancelled on Aug 17 following heavy German air raid losses. In 2008 Michael Korda authored “With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.”
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)

1940 Aug 16, 45 German aircrafts were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/16/02)

1940 Aug 18, The Duke of Windsor (1894-1972), was installed as Governor of the Bahamas. He had served as Britain’s King Edward VIII in 1936. Edward continued as governor of the Bahamas to 1945.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII)
1940 Aug 18, 71 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 8/18/02)

1940 Aug 20, Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/20/00)
1940 Aug 20, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
(AP, 8/20/97)

1940 Aug 23, German Luftwaffe began night bombing on London.
(MC, 8/23/02)

1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed London.
(MC, 8/24/02)

1940 Aug 25, The 1st (British) night bombing of Germany was over Berlin.
(MC, 8/25/02)

1940 Sep 3, US gave Britain 50 destroyers in exchange for Newfoundland base lease.
(MC, 9/3/01)

1940 Sep 7, Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights. Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler believed would soften Britain for an invasion. The invasion, "Operation Sea Lion," never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over England. The blitz only strengthened Britain's resistance. The defense of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called "their finest hour."
(AP, 9/7/97)(HN, 9/7/98)

1940 Sep 9, 28 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/9/01)

1940 Sep 11, Brian DePalma, Newark NJ, film director (Body Double, Dressed to Kill), was born.
(MC, 9/11/01)

1940 Sep 13, Buckingham Palace was hit by German bombs causing superficial damage.
(http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september13.html)

1940 Sep 15, The tide turned in Battle of Britain in WW II. A reported 185 German planes were shot down by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to abandon his invasion plans.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1940 Sep 15, Sergeant Ray Holmes (1915-2005) slammed his Hurricane into a German Dornier bomber to prevent it attacking Buckingham Palace. The date of 15 September has come to be known as Battle of Britain Day and has been commemorated every year since.
(AP, 11/1/05)

1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)

1940 Sep 18, 19 German aircraft were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/18/01)

1940 Sep 24, Luftwaffe bombed the Spitfire factory in Southampton.
(MC, 9/24/01)

1940 Sep 26, During the London Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffered a hit when a bomb exploded on the Clive Steps.
(HN, 9/26/99)

1940 Sep 27, 55 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/27/01)

1940 Sep 30, 47 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/30/01)

1940 Oct 2, 17 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1940 Oct 2, The British liner Empress, loaded with refugees for Canada, sank.
(MC, 10/2/01)

1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)

1940 Oct 9, John Winston Lennon (d.1980) was born in Liverpool, England. Composer; musician; one fourth of the idolized rock group, The Beatles; 2nd wife was Yoko Ono he had two children Julian (from his first wife who he mostly abandoned emotionally and financially) and Sean. On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building. "The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing."
(HN, 10/9/98)(AP, 12/8/98)(MC, 10/9/01)

1940 Oct 15-1940 Oct 16, London's Waterloo Station was bombed by Germans. The bombing continued on London for 2 days and killed 400 people.
(MC, 10/15/01)

1940 Oct 18, Britain reopened the Burma Road linking Myanmar with China, three months after closing it.
(AP, 10/18/06)

1940 Oct 31, In the Battle of Britain, the German and British duel for control of English Channel, ended.
(MC, 10/31/01)

1940 Nov 10, Arthur Neville Chamberlain (71), British premier (1937-40), died.
(MC, 11/10/01)

1940 Nov 11, Britain’s Royal Navy attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.
(HN, 11/11/98)

1940 Nov 14, Coventry, England, was devastated by German bombers in the worst air raid of World War II, killing 1,000.
(AP, 11/14/97)(HN, 11/14/98)

1940 Nov 19, A German air raid on Birmingham failed.
(MC, 11/19/01)

1940 Dec 8, During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launched a massive attack on London as night fell. For nearly 24 hours, the Luftwaffe rained tons of bombs over the city, causing the first serious damage to the House of Commons and Tower of London.
(MC, 12/8/01)

1940 Dec 9, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)

1940 Dec 16, British carried out an air raid on Italian Somalia.
(HN, 12/16/98)

1940 Dec 29, During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London, setting off what came to be known as "The Second Great Fire of London." In 2006 Margaret Gaskin authored “Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940.”
(AP, 12/29/97)(SSFC, 12/17/06, p.M3)

1940 Singer Dusty Springfield was born as Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in London.
(SFC, 3/4/99, p.D2)

1940 P.A. Wodehouse (d.1975), British writer, was put into an internment camp after Germany defeated France, where he and his wife, Edith, were living. He was released the following year and made five lighthearted radio broadcasts to England and America from Berlin.
(AP, 8/16/02)

1940 Britain formed the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to organize agents abroad. In 1942 the SOE began recruiting women. In 2005 Sarah Helm authored “A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of the SOE.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)

1940 Britain’s PM Winston Churchill sent a handful of young British officers to Washington, DC, to ingratiate themselves on the social scene and advance the British cause through good manners. They included Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and David Ogilvy. In 2008 Jennet Conant authored “The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.
(WSJ, 9/11/08, p.A13)

1940 Following the fall of France Claude Peri commandeered the merchant ship Le Rhin and placed it at the disposal of British naval intelligence. Peri got his mistress, Madeleine Bayard, the job of cipher officer on the ship. It was renamed the HMS Fidelity and got torpedoed in 1942. In 2005 Edward Marriot authored “Claude and Madeleine: A True Story of Love War and Espionage.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)

1940-1944 Britain’s Special Operations Executive, an agency set up by Winston Churchill, carried out operations in Albania to support anti-German partisans. In 2008 Roderick Bailey authored ”The Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle.”
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.97)

1941 Jan 21, British communist newspaper "Daily Worker" was banned.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1941 Jan 21, Australia & Britain attacked Tobruk, Libya.
(MC, 1/21/02)

1941 Jan 22, British and Australian troops captured Tobruk from Italians.
(MC, 1/22/02)

1941 Jan 24, Josslyn Victor Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, was shot to death in Kenya. He was having an affair with Diana Delves Broughton. The story was covered in a 1982 book “White Mischief” by James Fox, which was made into a 1988 movie. The BBC television drama The Happy Valley, first transmitted on 6 September 1987, told the story of Erroll's murder, as seen through the eyes of 15 year-old the Hon. Juanita Carbery, daughter of Lord Carbery, to whom John Delves Broughton confessed his guilt even before he was arrested. Alice de Janze committed suicide not long after the acquittal Broughton. In 2010 Paul Spicer authored “The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice de Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josslyn_Hay,_22nd_Earl_of_Erroll)(SSFC, 8/15/10, p.F4)

1941 Jan 27, The United States and Great Britain began high-level military talks in Washington.
(HN, 1/27/99)

1941 Feb 6, The RAF cleared the way as British took Benghazi, Libya, trapping thousands of Italians.
(HN, 2/6/99)

1941 Feb 9, British troops conquered El Agheila.
(MC, 2/9/02)

1941 Feb 10, London severed diplomatic relations with Romania. Romania's indigenous fighter, the IAR 80, saw service in defense of its homeland and against the Soviets.
(HN, 2/10/97)

1941 Feb 17, The SS Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The British ship was carrying some 219 tons of silver when it sank in the North Atlantic some 300 miles (490 km) off the Irish coast. Of the 85 people on board, only one survived. In 2011 Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration confirmed the identity and location of the ship. In 2012 Odyssey Marine Exploration said it had succeeded in removing about 43% of the insured silver.
(www.shipwreck.net/ssgairsoppahistoricaloverview.php)(AFP, 9/27/11)(SFC, 7/18/12, p.A2)

1941 Feb 19, George Orwell published his essay “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,” expressing his opinions on the situation in wartime Britain.
(Econ, 2/2/13, SR p.5)(http://tinyurl.com/cg953fv)

1941 Feb 22, Arthur T "Bomber" Harris became British Air Marshal.
(MC, 2/22/02)

1941 Feb 26, British took the Somali capital in East Africa.
(HN, 2/26/98)

1941 Mar 5, Britain severed all relation with Bulgaria and prepared for an air attack on Bulgaria.
(HN, 3/5/98)

1941 Mar 7, British troops invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 3/7/02)
1941 Mar 7, 50,000 British soldiers landed in Greece.
(MC, 3/7/02)

1941 Mar 10, Vichy France threatened to use its navy if Britain would not allow food to reach France.
(HN, 3/10/98)

1941 Mar 21, The last Italian post in East Libya fell to the British.
(HN, 3/21/98)

1941 Mar 26, Clinton Richard Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author, was born. He came to prominence with his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene,” which popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)

1941 Mar 27, Britain leased defense bases in Trinidad to the U.S. for a period of 99 years.
(HN, 3/27/98)

1941 Mar 28, The Italian fleet was routed by the British at the Battle of Matapan.
(HN, 3/28/99)
1941 Mar 28, Novelist and critic Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), born as Virginia Stephen, died in Lewes, England. She feared a mental breakdown and threw herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body was never found. She was an English novelist, essayist and critic and wrote standing up. In 1997 "Art and Affection, A Life of Virginia Woolf" was published. In 1997 a biography by Hermione Lee was published.
(WUD, 1994, p.1643)(SFC, 6/23/96, zone 1 p.2)(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.7)(AP, 3/28/97)(SFEC, 6/22/97, BR p.8)(HN, 3/28/01)

1941 Mar 29, The British sank five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 3/29/98)

1941 Mar 30, The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel began its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
(HN, 3/30/99)

1941 Apr 3, Churchill warned Stalin of German invasion.
(MC, 4/3/02)

1941 Apr 6, Italian-held Addis Ababa surrendered to British and Ethiopian forces.
(MC, 4/6/02)

1941 Apr 11, Germany bombers blitzed Coventry, England.
(HN, 4/11/98)

1941 Apr 17, British troop landed in Iraq.
(MC, 4/17/02)

1941 Apr 23, Greece Army surrendered to Nazis; RAF flew Greek king George II to Egypt.
(MC, 4/23/02)

1941 Apr 24, British army began the evacuation of Greece.
(MC, 4/24/02)

1941 Apr 28, Last British troops in Greece surrendered.
(MC, 4/28/02)

1941 April 30, Iraqi pro-German junta leader Rashid Ali ordered 9,000 troops to surround Habaniyah and prepare to take it. The British troops, supported by Assyrian and local infantry, defeated three Iraqi brigades with a few hundred troops and 96 aircraft. By the end of the battle, British bombers flying from Habaniyah destroyed the entire Iraqi air force. The ground troops, aided by reinforcements, launched a counterattack, took control of Baghdad and reinstalled a friendly government.
(AP, 7/5/03)

1941 May 2, Hostilities broke out between British forces in Iraq and that country’s pro-German faction under PM Rashid Ali. Quickly overthrown by British troops, a pro-British regime under PM Nuri al-Said was installed, declaring war on the Axis powers in 1943.
(HN, 5/2/99)(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A10)

1941 May 3, There was a German air raid on Liverpool.
(MC, 5/3/02)

1941 May 7, British House of Commons voted for Churchill (477-3).
(MC, 5/7/02)

1941 May 11, London’s Bridgewater House was bombed. A major work by French painter Paul Delaroche, "Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers" (1837) depicting the British monarch shortly before his execution in 1649, was thought to have been virtually destroyed. In 2009 it was unrolled and found to be in good condition.
(Reuters, 11/24/09)
1941 May 11, The 1st Messerschmidt 109F was shot down above England.
(MC, 5/11/02)

1941 May 15, 1st British turbojet flew.
(MC, 5/15/02)

1941 May 16, The last great German air attack on Great Britain was at Birmingham.
(MC, 5/16/02)

1941 May 18, Italian army under General Aosta surrendered to Britain in Ethiopia.
(SC, 5/18/02)

1941 May 22, British troops attacked Baghdad.
(MC, 5/22/02)

1941 May 24, The German battleship Bismarck sank the British dreadnought HMS Hood in the North Atlantic. 1416 died with only three survivors.
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/99)(ON, 10/09, p.2)

1941 May 27, The German battleship Bismarck was sunk off France by British naval and air forces with a loss of more than 2,100 lives. British ships rescued 4 officers and 106 of the crew. A German fishing vessel was reported to have rescued another 100 men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck)(AP, 5/27/07)(ON, 10/09, p.5)

1941 May 29, Roy Crewsdon, rocker (Freddie & The Dreamers), was born in Manchester.
(SC, 5/29/02)

1941 May 31, An armistice was arranged between the British and the Iraqis. The British were to remain in the country and the Iraqis were to do nothing to help the Axis powers.
(HN, 5/31/99)

1941 Jun 1, British troops occupied Baghdad, Iraq.
(www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/dec02/middleEast.asp)

1941 Jul 6, German planes attacked the SS Devon off the east coast of England. Reginald Earnshaw (14) died in the attack after serving for several months. In 2010 he was hailed as the youngest known British service casualty in World War II.
(AP, 2/5/10)

1941 Jun 15, Evelyn Underhill, English poet and mystic, died.
(HT, 6/15/00)

1941 Jul 13, Britain and the Soviet Union signed a mutual aid pact, providing the means for Britain to send war materiel to the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/13/98)

1941 Jul 19, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe. The BBC World Service began regular broadcasting throughout Europe with the opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which in Morse Code spell V for "Victory."
(AP, 7/19/97)(MC, 7/19/02)

1941 Jul 23, Douglas Bader (1910-1982), legless British RAF pilot, was shot down over France and captured by the Germans. He was liberated when the US First Army arrived on April 16, 1945. The 1956 film “Reach for the Sky” was based on the 1954 book by Paul Brickhill: “Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, Hero of the Battle of Britain.”
(ON, 9/05, p.9)

1941 Aug 9, US President Franklin Roosevelt and PM Winston Churchill met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Their meeting produced the August 14 Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the two countries on war aims, even though the US was still a neutral country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter)

1941 Aug 10, Great Britain and the Soviet Union promised aid to Turkey if it was attacked by the Axis.
(HN, 8/10/98)

1941 Aug 13, A prototype of the GEE or AMES Type 7000 British radio navigation system was lost on a raid over Hanover, Germany. GEE was devised by Robert Dippy and developed at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Swanage. Dippy later went to the United States where he worked on the development of the LORAN system. Loran, long-range navigation, later fell out of favor with the development of satellite-based navigation systems.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEE_%28navigation%29)(Econ, 3/12/11, TQ p.21)

1941 Aug 14, The Atlantic Charter was created in 1941. It was a joint declaration of peace aims and a statement of principles that renounced aggression by US Pres. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(AP, 8/14/97)
1941 Aug 14, Josef Jakobs, German spy, was executed in Tower of London.
(MC, 8/14/02)

1941 Aug 25, British and Soviet forces entered Iran, opening up a route to supply the Soviet Union.
(HN, 8/25/98)

1941 Aug 27, The Shah of Iran abdicated the throne to his son Reza Pahlavi. Britain forced Reza Shah to abdicate and installed his son Mohammed.
(www.indiana.edu/~league/1941.htm)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)

1941 Aug 28, The German U-boat U-570 was captured by the British and renamed Graph.
(HN, 8/28/98)

1941 Oct 4, Jackie Collins, actress, author, was born in London, England. Her books included "The world Is Full of Married Men (1968), "Stud" (1969), "Bitch" (1979) and "Deadly Embrace" (2002).
(MC, 10/4/01)(SSFC, 8/4/02, Par p.14)

1941 Nov 7, British air attacks hit Berlin, Mannheim and Ruhrgebied.
(MC, 11/7/01)

1941 Nov 10, Churchill promised to join the U.S. "within the hour" in the event of war with Japan.
(HN, 11/10/98)

1941 Nov 13, A German U-boat, the U-81 torpedoed Great Britain's premier aircraft carrier, the HMS Ark Royal. The ship sank the next day.
(HN, 11/13/99)

1941 Nov 18, British troops opened an attack on Tobruk, North Africa.
(MC, 11/18/01)

1941 Nov 21, Juliet Mills, actress (Nanny & the Professor, QB VII), was born in London England.
(MC, 11/21/01)

1941 Nov 22, British cruiser Devonshire sank the German sub Atlantis.
(MC, 11/22/01)

1941 Nov 27, British 13th Army corp. reached Tobruk.
(MC, 11/27/01)

1941 Nov, The first British SAS operation, planned to see troops parachute deep behind enemy lines and destroy German and Italian aircraft at two airfields in Libya, took place. Strong winds and driving rain caused chaotic conditions, with several soldiers becoming injured as they attempted to parachute and one plane shot down, killing 15 troops and the crew. In 2011 a 600-page book, called "The SAS War Diary," detailed the regiment's role in the invasions of Sicily and Italy and famed D-Day landings in France.
(AP, 9/23/11)

1941 Dec 1, British declared a state of emergency in Malaya following reports of Japanese attacks.
(HN, 12/1/98)
1941 Dec 1, British cruiser Devonshire sank the German sub Python.
(MC, 12/1/01)

1941 Dec 10, British battleship Prince of Wales sank off Singapore.
(MC, 12/10/01)

1941 Dec 13, British forces launched an offensive in Libya.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1941 Dec 13, U-81 torpedoed the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal.
(MC, 12/13/01)

1941 Dec 19, Japanese landed on Hong Kong and clashed with British troops.
(HN, 12/19/98)

1941 Dec 22, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for a wartime conference with President Roosevelt.
(AP, 12/22/97)

1941 Dec 25, Japan announced the surrender of the British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong. Major John Crawford (d.1997) and some 1,975 Canadian soldiers were captured and incarcerated at the Sham Shui Po prison camp at Kowloon for 44 months.
(G&M, 7/30/97, p.A24)(HN, 12/25/02)(AP, 12/25/07)

1941 Dec 26, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.
(AP, 12/26/97)

1941 Vera Brittain authored "England’s Hour," an account of life under the Blitzkrieg.
(WSJ, 1/21/02, p.A1)

1941 The British seized Eritrea from the Italians.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.A22)
1941 Britain created its Special Air Service (SAS) to create havoc behind German lines.
(Econ, 10/22/05, p.60)

1941 Pelham Graham (PG) Wodehouse (1881-1975), English-US writer, made 5 radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany. This kept him out of England for the last 34 years of his life.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.87)

Go to GB 1942