istoryworld
Events relating to england
British dancer Robert Helpmann choreographs the ballet scenes in the film The Red Shoes, featuring Moira Shearer
The Morris Minor is launched, designed by Alec Issigonis, and becomes one of Britain's best-selling cars
Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play
The first West Indian immigrants to Britain arive from Jamaica on the Empire Windrush
British astronomer Fred Hoyle puts forward a 'steady-state' theory of the universe, in which matter is continually created
Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears together establish an annual festival in the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh
The National Health Service comes into effect in Britain, providing free medical, dental and hospital services for the entire population
Frederick Ashton's Cinderella, to music by Prokofiev, is the first full-length ballet by an English choreographer
Ealing Studios produce a film of Compton Mackenzie's 1947 novel Whisky Galore, about an alcoholic windfall on the island of Barra
Carol Reed directs The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and written by Graham Greene
Enid Blyton introduces her most successful character, Noddy, a small boy who can't avoid nodding when he speaks
British atomic physicist Klaus Fuchs is discovered to be a Soviet agent, passing nuclear secrets to the USSR
The world's first commercial jet airliner, the Comet, designed by de Havilland, goes into service with BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation)
George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel set in a terrifying totalitarian state of the future, watched over by Big Brother
C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova form the Festival Ballet, in time for next year's Festival of Britain
British author Doris Lessing publishes her first novel, The Grass is Singing
Kirsten Flagstad sings the posthumous premiere, in London, of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs
The Medical Research Council in Britain produces a report, by Austin Hill and Richard Doll, linking smoking and lung cancer
Appointed minister of housing in Churchill's new government, Harold Macmillan soon achieves the ambitious target of building 300,000 houses a year
The British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean escape to the Soviet Union just ahead of their detection and arrest
The Festival of Britain, on the south bank of the Thames in London, celebrates the end of wartime austerity
British architects Arnold Powell and John Moya design the Skylon as a central feature for the Festival of Britain
British architect Basil Spence wins the competition to design a new cathedral for Coventry
British author John Wyndham creates a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids
