English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island

The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together for the first time as a single volume, published in New York

English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love

Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars

In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin

Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels

English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano

J.B. Priestley challenges audiences with An Inspector Calls, a play in which moral guilt spreads like an infection

Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play

Enid Blyton introduces her most successful character, Noddy, a small boy who can't avoid nodding when he speaks

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

British author Doris Lessing publishes her first novel, The Grass is Singing

British author John Wyndham creates a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids

A Question of Upbringing begins Antony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time'

Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences

English author L.P. Hartley sets his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900

James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale

Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator

Politician and author Winston Churchill completes his six-volume history The Second World War

Anglo-Irish novelist Iris Murdoch publishes her first novel, Under the Net

English author Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim, strikes an anti-establishment chord

William Golding gives a chilling account of schoolboy savagery in his first novel, Lord of the Flies

Kingsley Amis and other young writers in Britain become known as Angry Young Men

Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American is set in contemporary Vietnam and foresees troubles ahead