British golfer Nick Faldo wins the first of three victories in six years in the British Open

Ayatollah Khomeini declares a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses

British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes

English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's first opera, Greek, is premiered in Munich

English conceptual artist Damien Hirst organizes the first exhibition of the 'Young British Artists', also known as the Britpack

A terrorist bomb brings down flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland

Rupert Murdoch launches Sky, a satellite television channel, in the UK

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduces an extremely unpopluar poll tax, last used in the Middle Ages

Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare

British primatologist Jane Goodall publishes Through a Window, exposing violence and brutality in chimpanzees

The Conservative government's poll tax is greeted with violent riots in London and a campaign of non-payment

UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, by now at odds with many in her cabinet, is challenged in a leadership contest and loses

Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London

Regeneration is the first volume of English author Pat Barker's trilogy of novels set during World War I

Eric Clapton's album Unplugged includes 'Tears in Heaven', mourning the death of his four-year-old son

Betty Boothroyd, a Labour MP, becomes the first woman Speaker of Britain's House of Commons

English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS

Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, announce that they have agreed to separate

English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I

Vikram Seth publishes his novel A Suitable Boy, a family saga in post-independence India

Eduardo Paolozzi's vast bronze sculpture The Wealth of Nations is installed at South Kyle, near Edinburgh

Scottish author Irvine Welsh publishes his first novel, Trainspotting

Rachel Whiteread's Untitled (House) is a concrete cast of the interior of a house in London's East End

UK and Irish premiers John Major and Albert Reynolds sign the Downing Street Declaration, a strategy for peace in Nothern Ireland

France's President Mitterrand and the British queen Elizabeth II together open the tunnel under the English Channel