France formally declares war on Britain half way through the War of the Austrian Succession

Charles Edward Stuart lands at Eriskay in the Hebrides, launching the Forty-Five Rebellion

Charles Edward Stuart gathers support for the Forty-Five Rebellion on his way south from the Hebrides and reaches Edinburgh

Charles Edward Stuart marches as far south as Derby, but then turns back

Charles Edward Stuart and his 5000 Scots are routed at Culloden, bringing the Forty-Five Rebellion to an abrupt end

Tartan and Highland dress are banned by the British government, in a prohibition not lifted until 1782

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence which grows into the longest novel in the English language

Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones

Horace Walpole begins to create his own Strawberry Hill, a neo-Gothic fantasy, on the banks of the Thames west of London

English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard

English gardener Lancelot Brown sets up in business as a freelance 'improver of grounds', and soon acquires the nickname Capablity Brown

Britain is one of the last nations to adjust to the more accurate Gregorian calendar, causing a suspicious public to fear they have been robbed of eleven days

English obstetrician William Smellie introduces scientific midwifery as a result of his researches into childbirth

Scottish chemist Joseph Black identifies the existence of a gas, carbon dioxide, which he calls 'fixed air'

Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language

William Pitt the Elder becomes secretary of state and transforms the British war effort against France in America

English painter Joseph Wright sets up a studio in his home town, Derby

Joshua Reynolds, by now the most fashionable portrait painter in London, copes with as many as 150 sitters in a year

A comet returns exactly at the time predicted by English astronomer Edmond Halley, and is subsequently known by his name

Liverpool-born artist George Stubbs sets up in London as a painter, above all, of people and horses

Portrait-painter Thomas Gainsborough moves from Suffolk to set up a studio in fashionable Bath

Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood sets up a factory of his own in his home town of Burslem

Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception

A succession of victories cause 1759 to be known in Britain as annus mirabilis, the wonderful year

German painter Johann Zoffany moves to England to find work as a painter of conversation pieces and portraits