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

Oxford medical student Roger Bannister runs the first four-minute mile, at the Iffley Road track

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

18-year-old English jockey Lester Piggott wins the first of a record nine Derbys

William Walton's opera Troilus and Cressida has its premiere at Covent Garden

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

Michael Tippett's first opera, A Midsummer Marriage, has its premiere at Covent Garden

81-year-old Winston Churchill resigns as Britain's prime minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden

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

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

British dancer Joan Benesh and her husband Rudolf develop the Benesh system of dance notation

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

The USA and Britain withdraw their offer of financial aid for Nasser's Aswan dam

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

Fred Hoyle, William Fowler, and Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge explain stellar nucleosynthesis

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

David Lean directs William Holden, Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins in The Bridge on the River Kwai

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

Eight members of the Manchester United football team die in an air crash when flying back to England from Belgrade via Munich