J. Arthur Rank founds the Religious Film Society to make films in Britain that will bring people to Christianity

The first Dinky Toys cars go on sale in Britain, originally under the name Modelled Miniatures

In Down and Out in Paris and London English author George Orwell writes a sympathetic account of the people he meets on hard times

Arnold Schoenberg leaves his teaching post in Germany, now under Nazi control, and in 1934 settles in Los Angeles

Dmitry Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District has its premiere in Leningrad's Maly Theatre

Nazi architect Albert Speer designs a spectacular new setting for the party's annual Nuremberg rally

US author Henry Miller publishes in Paris a largely sexual autobiography, Tropic of Cancer, about his life as an expatriate

German photographer Leni Riefenstahl glorifies Hitler and the Nuremberg rally in her film Triumph of the Will

The first opera festival at Glyndebourne, a country house in Sussex, opens with a performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro

Benito Mussolini plays host in Venice to Adolf Hitler, the newcomer among European dictators

British tennis player Fred Perry wins the first of three consecutive Wimbledon singles titles

British painter Francis Bacon has his first solo show in London

Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie discover artificial radioactivity

Erich Korngold, one of Austria's most admired composers, moves to Hollywood

Adolf Hitler visits his SA commander, Ernst Roehm, in his hotel before having him shot

Multiple murders are carried out on Hitler's orders during the Night of the Long Knives

In addition to the SS, Heinrich Himmler is given command of the state secret police, or Gestapo

The Scottish National Party, or SNP, is founded to campaign for an independent Scotland

Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grapelli form the Quintet du Hot Club de France

The Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated by Nazis in a coup that fails

Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeds the murdered Dollfuss as Austria's chancellor and Hitler's opponent

Paul von Hindenburg dies, enabling Adolf Hitler to combine the roles of president, chancellor and supreme commander of the German armed forces

In I, Claudius the autobiography of the Roman emperor is ghost-written by Robert Graves

Sergei Rachmaninov writes the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in his villa beside Lake Lucerne

In A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh sends his hero Tony Last to a disastrous fate, far away in the Amazon rain forest