Trinidadian cricketer Brian Lara sets a new world record, scoring 501 not out when playing for Warwickshire against Durham

Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia

Tony Blair wins the leadership of the Labour party, and sets about establishing what he calls New Labour

The IRA declares a cease-fire in Northern Ireland, a gesture followed a month later by Protestant paramilitaries

Britain and Argentina come to an agreement concerning the future exploitation of oil around the Falkland Islands

British mathematician Andrew Wiles publishes, in Annals of Mathematics, his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem

British choreographer Matthew Bourne has a great success with his all-male Swan Lake

British artist Tracey Emin causes a stir with Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995

An IRA bomb at Canary Wharf shatters the fifteen-month ceasefire achieved after the Downing Street Declaration

The Stone of Scone is returned from Westminster to Scotland, exactly seven centuries after its removal by Edward I

Chris Ofili's painting The Holy Virgin is embellished with elephant dung

The British pop group Spice Girls sell millions of their first album, Spice, breaking all previous UK records

The divorce is finalized of Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales

A fatal variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease) is first identified in Britain, linked to BSE but capable of infecting humans

Dolly the Sheep is cloned in an epoch-making experiment at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh

Tony Blair leads the Labour party to its greatest ever electoral victory, winning 418 seats at Westminster

The poems forming Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters describe his relationship with Sylvia Plath

A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Elton John sings a revised version of Candle in the Wind in Westminster Abbey, as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales

The Real IRA, a splinter group of the Provisional IRA, declares its commitment to a continuing campaign of violence

The British architectural firm of Foster & Partners completes the Hong Kong International Airport

A proposed referendum on northern Irish issues is accepted by all the relevant political parties in what becomes known as the Good Friday Agreement

In the referendum to endorse the Good Friday Agreement, the terms are accepted by majorities in both the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

Anthony Gormley's massive metal Angel of the North is erected near Gateshead in northern England

Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark