English poet Philip Larkin finds his distinctive voice in his collection The Less Deceived

British philologist J.R.R. Tolkien publishes the third and final volume of his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings

English poet Ted Hughes marries US poet Sylvia Plath

John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger features in the first season of London's new English Stage Company

The Hawk in the Rain is English author Ted Hughes' first volume of poems

The publication of the novel Justine launches Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet

English author John Braine publishes his first novel, Room at the Top

English author Stevie Smith publishes her collection of poems Not Waving but Drowning

Laurence Olivier brings the music-hall artist Archie Rice vibrantly to life in John Osborne's The Entertainer

Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin

Chicken Soup with Barley begins a trilogy by English playwright Arnold Wesker

English author Alan Sillitoe publishes his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week

Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar

Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation

British author Laurie Lee remembers a Cotswold boyhood in Cider with Rosie

English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells

Paul Scofield plays Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

Penguin Books are prosecuted for obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and are acquitted

British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children, James and the Giant Peach

British novelist Muriel Spark publishes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, set in an Edinburgh school in the 1930s

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, setting poems by Wilfred Owen, is first performed in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral

British author Doris Lessing publishes an influential feminist novel, The Golden Notebook

British author P.D. James's first novel, Cover Her Face, introduces her poet detective Adam Dalgleish

Anthony Burgess publishes A Clockwork Orange, a novel depicting a disturbing and violent near-future