1587
Mary, Queen of Scots executed
1596
Robert Cecil, Secretary of State
1600
British East India Company incorporated
1601
Essex executed
1603
James I
1603
Ralegh treason trial and imprisonment
1611
Authorized Version of the Bible
1616
Death of William Shakespeare
1618
Ralegh executed; Thirty Years War starts
1625
Charles I
1632
Lord Baltimore granted patent for the settlement of Maryland
1641
The Grand Remonstrance issued
1642
Civil War starts; Battle of Edgehill
1643
Battle of Newbury
1644
Battle of Marston Moor
1645
New Model Army established
1649
Charles I executed; massacres at Wexford and Drogheda
1651
Charles II crowned at Scone; Hobbes’ Leviathan published
1655
Jamaica captured
1658
Cromwell dies
1660
Charles II; Declaration of Breda; Pepys begins his diary
1662
The Royal Society; Boyle’s Law
1666
Fire of London
1670
Hudson’s Bay Company
1673
Test Act
1678
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
1685
James II
1689
William III and Mary II
1690
Battle of the Boyne
1692
Massacre of Glencoe
1694
Bank of England
1695
Bank of Scotland
1702
Queen Anne
1704
Battle of Blenheim; capture of Gibraltar
1707
Union with Scotland
1714
George I
1719
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
1722
Walpole, first Prime Minister
1727
George II
1740
War of Austrian Succession; Arne composes ‘Rule Britannia’
1742
Handel’s Messiah
1746
Battle of Culloden
1751
Clive captures Arcot
1755
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
1756
Seven Years War
1759
General Wolfe dies at Battle of Quebec
1760
George III
1765
Stamp Act; Hargreaves’ spinning jenny
1767
Revd Laurence Stone’s Tristram Shandy
1768
Royal Academy of Arts founded
1772
Warren Hastings, first Governor General of Bengal
1773
Boston Tea Party
1774
Priestley isolates oxygen
1775
American Revolution – Lexington and Concord
1776
American Declaration of Independence
1779
Captain Cook killed in Hawaii
1780
Gordon Riots; Epsom Derby
1781
Battle of Yorktown
1783
Pitt the Younger PM
1788
Regency Crisis
1789
French Revolution
1792
Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man
1799
Napoleon
1801
Union with Ireland
1805
Trafalgar
1807
Abolition of Slave Trade Act
1815
Waterloo
1820
George IV
1828
University of London founded
1829
Catholic Emancipation Act
1830
William IV
1832
First Reform Act
1833
Abolition of slavery in British colonies Act
1834
Houses of Parliament burned down
1836
Births, Marriages & Deaths Act
1837
Queen Victoria
1838
Public Records Office founded
1839
Bed Chamber Crisis; Opium War
1840
Prince Albert; Treaty of Waitangi
1843
Joule’s First Law
1844
Rochdale Pioneers; first telegraph line in England
1846
Repeal of Corn Laws
1847
Marks and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto
1849
Punjab conquered
1850
Public libraries; Tennyson, Poet Laureate
1854
Crimean War; British Medical Association founded
1855
Daily Telegraph founded; Palmerston PM
1857
Sepoy Rebellion (Indian Mutiny); Trollope’s Barchester Towers
1858
Canning, first Viceroy of India
1859
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
1861
Prince Albert dies; American Civil War
1865
Abraham Lincoln assassinated
1867
Second Reform Act; first bicycle
1868
TUC
1869
Suez Canal opened; Cutty Sark launched
1870
Death of Dickens
1876
1880
Gladstone PM
1881
First Boer War
1884
Third Reform Act
1885
Gordon dies at Khartoum
1887
Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee
1891
Elementary school fees abolished
1895
Salisbury PM
1896
Daily Mail founded
1898
Omdurman
1899
Second Boer War
1900
Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius
1901
Edward VII
1903
Suffragettes
1904
Entente Cordiale
1908
Borstal opened
1909
Old Age Pensions
1910
George V
1914
Irish Home Rule; First World War
1916
Lloyd George PM
1918
RAF formed from Royal Flying Corps; Marie Stopes
1919
John Maynard Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace
1920
Black and Tans; Anglican Church in Wales disestablished
1921
Irish Free State
1922
Bonar Law PM
1923
Baldwin PM
1924
First Labour Government (MacDonald PM); Baldwin PM; Lenin dies
1925
Britain joins Gold standard
1926
General Strike
1928
Women over twenty-one given vote
1929
The Depression; MacDonald PM
1931
National Government; Statute of Westminster
1932
British Union of Fascists
1933
Hitler
1935
Baldwin PM
1936
Edward VIII; George VI; Spanish Civil War
1937
Chamberlain PM
1938
Austria annexed by Germany; Air Raid Precautions (ARP)
1939
Second World War
1940
Battle of Britain; Dunkirk; Churchill PM
1942
Beveridge Report; fall of Singapore and Rangoon
1944
Butler Education Act; Normandy allied landings
1945
Attlee PM; Germany and Japan surrender
1946
UN founded; National Insurance Act; National Health Service
1947
India Independence; Pakistan formed
1948
Railways nationalized; Berlin Airlift; Ceylon (Sri Lanka) independence
1949
NATO; Irish Independence; Korean War
1951
Churchill PM
1952
1955
Eden PM; Cyprus Emergency
1956
Suez Crisis
1957
Macmillan PM
1958
Life Peerages; EEC
1959
Vietnam War; Fidel Castro
1960
Macmillan’s Wind of Change speech
1963
Douglas-Home PM; De Gaulle veto on UK EEC membership; Kennedy assassination
1964
Wilson PM
1965
Southern Rhodesia UDI
1967
Pound devalued
1969
Open University; Northern Ireland Troubles; Robin Knox-Johnston first solo, non-stop sailing circumnavigation
1970
Heath PM
1971
Decimal currency in UK
1972
Bloody Sunday, Northern Ireland
1973
Britain in EEC; VAT
1974
Wilson PM
1976
Callaghan PM; first Concorde passenger flight
1979
Thatcher PM; Rhodesian Settlement
1982
Falklands War
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev; Global warming – British report hole in ozone layer
1986
Chernobyl; Reagan–Gorbachev Zero missile summit
1987
Wall Street Crash
1988
Lockerbie
1989
Berlin Wall down
1990
John Major PM; Iraq invades Kuwait
1991
Gulf War; Helen Sharman first Briton in space; Tim Berners-Lee first website; collapse of Soviet Communism
1992
Maastricht Treaty
1994
Church of England Ordination of Women; Channel Tunnel opens
1995
British forces to Sarajevo
1996
Dolly the Sheep clone
1997
Blair PM; Diana Princess of Wales dies; Hong Kong returns to China
1998
Rolls-Royce sold to BMW; Good Friday Agreement
1999
Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections
2001
Terrorist attacks on New York
2002
Elizabeth the Queen Mother dies
2003
Second Gulf War
2004
Asian Tsunami
2005
Freedom of Information Act; Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles wed; terrorist attacks on London
2006
Queen’s eightieth birthday
2007
Ministry of Justice created; Brown PM
2008
Northern Rock collapse
2009
Market crash; banks partly nationalized; MPs expenses scandal
2010
Cameron PM. First post-Second World War British Coalition Government
Acknowledgements
No book writes itself. Even revised versions and updates rely on people who encourage and those who help as a matter of course or because it is something they do every day, even without knowing who the author is or seeing the bigger picture. In these times, we should thank the people who compile and post piles of information on the internet. Yet, I still cannot bring myself to use the World Wide Web as a research tool – one day, I suppose, but not yet. Sitting on a library committee during 2010, I found myself arguing for the purchase of a reference work rather than relying on readers to download. I was surprised by the depth of argument for the internet version. There is something very special about handling paper and turning pages – and anyway, who needs pop-ups and cookies in their lives? Maybe it is generational.
It’s not surprising then that this author would say a huge thank you to the always patient staff at the British Library’s Rare Books and Music Reading Room. Also, to the Senate Library at the University of London and the Institute for Historical Research. Thanks are ever due to the careful research of Nick Beale. To the many who advised I am in debt and grateful even if I do not mention all of them by name. Some must be known. Hazhir Teimourian encouraged me over his good lunches and said keep going when I wondered if I was doing the right thing. My editor, Andreas Campomar, helped by never rushing me when good Catholic guilt inside me insisted that I was falling behind the run rate. We both tacitly understood that I would be watched over by Howard Watson – an exceptional copy editor with the confidence an author too often needs (well at least this one does). My biggest Thank You letter is to my sometime publisher, now my agent and always my friend, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson who has never sent nor received an email or made a mobile telephone call, and does not care that Google is a verb.
Introduction
The original edition of This Sceptred Isle was generously received at seemingly every level. It set out to explain the story of these, the British islands. Later volumes covered the twentieth century and, most importantly, the origins, growth and end of British colonial and imperial history. Put together, the three books suggested the character of the people who became the modern-day British and to some extent the making of Britishness. However, the three volumes were never intended to define Britishness nor specifically trace its progress. Three separate volumes could not do that to my satisfaction. The task in this single volume therefore is firstly to tell the whole story from the Romans to the twenty-first century, including stronger emphasis from the seventeenth century on colonial and imperial history, and to make all the connections with institutions and changing industrial and social characteristics that produce, in loose terms, that which we call Britishness. I have long believed that Britishness as others would see it is an image created inadvertently by Winston S. Churchill during the Second World War. Consequently, anomalies occur when, for example, we consider that Britishness is not exclusively British. Moreover, British may have a number of definitions; not all those definitions may be compatible with the term’s popular, even universal, image. Yet it would appear that it is nonsense to suggest anyone can be British; surely, the first qualification is to be English, Scots or Welsh. The province of Northern Ireland, founded as recently as 1921, is in the United Kingdom but not part of Great Britain; is it then denied a Britishness status? Certainly a large part of its population would not easily embrace membership of the Britishness club.
Yet there is no exclusivity to Britishness. In theory you simply need to adopt the language, the mannerisms and the style – that is the superficial make-up of being British. The Anglo-Saxon connection between the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is an obvious language-based transfer of identity.
If there is a determining factor to identifying Britishness it is the history
of the British Isles. It is the tracing of the growth and composition of the peoples of these islands, together with the institutions that influence the character of those peoples and determine the social and political patterns and securities of their lives, that suggest Britishness is an evolving characteristic. Moreover, the British have absorbed and in many cases chosen the influences on the tones of their societies since Saxon times. This fortune (and let us suppose for a moment that this is what it is) is quite unlike the times of those living on Continental Europe; their ancestry has been crisscrossed by armies and migrating populations. Consequently, influences on their national character, including their language and customs, have been imposed rather than chosen.