English radical William Cobbett begins his journeys round England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides

English author William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays

During his coronation George IV has the doors of Westminster Abbey closed against his queen, Caroline

George IV wears a tartan kilt when visiting Edinburgh, and launches a new craze for Highland dress

Walter Scott begins to transform Abbotsford into a romantic house that he refers to as his 'conundrum castle'

Daniel O'Connell organizes Catholic Associations throughout Ireland, funded by the members' penny subscriptions

A Rugby schoolboy, William Webb Ellis, picks up the football and runs with it in rugby union's founding myth

The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, outlawing trade unions in Britain, are repealed

12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory

Active (later called Locomotion) is the engine on the first passenger railway, between Stockton and Darlington

Scottish engineer Thomas Telford completes two suspension bridges in Wales, at Conwy and over the Menai Strait

English artist Samuel Palmer moves to Shoreham, in Kent, for the most inspired years of his career

The Duke of Wellington becomes British prime minister, heading the Tory government at a time when reform is urgently needed

William Burke and William Hare murder 16 victims and sell their bodies to the Edinburgh Medical School for anatomical study

The Metropolitan Police, set up in London by Robert Peel, become known as 'bobbies' from his first name

The Emancipation Act, enabling Daniel O'Connell to take his seat at Westminster, at last removes the restrictions on Catholics in UK public life

German composer Felix Mendelssohn visits the Hebrides and see's Fingal's Cave, later the theme of his Hebrides Overture

Oxford and Cambridge compete against each other in the first university boat race, held at Henley

The locomotive Rocket, built by George and Robert Stephenson, defeats two rivals in the Rainhill trials, near Liverpool

The death of the last infant cousin senior to her in the royal succession makes Victoria heir to the British throne

Earl Grey becomes British prime minister at the head of a Whig government committed to reform

George Stephenson's railway between Liverpool and Manchester opens, with passengers pulled by eight locomotives based on Rocket

The first Whig Reform Bill is carried in the British House of Commons by a single vote

HMS Beagle sails from Plymouth to survey the coasts of the southern hemisphere, with Charles Darwin as the expedition's naturalist

English scientist Michael Faraday reports his discovery of the first law of electrolysis, to be followed a year later by the second