Vidkun Quisling, Fascist president of occupied Norway from 1942, is tried and executed for treason

Twenty-two German defendants are put on trial in Nuremberg, charged with war crimes

Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars

In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin

Sergei Eisenstein completes Part 2 of his intended epic film trilogy Ivan the Terrible

Sadler's Wells Ballet moves to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (and is known from 1956 as the Royal Ballet)

The takeover of the Bank of England launches an extensive programme of nationalization by the Attlee government

Frederick Ashton choreographs Symphonic Variations, to music by César Franck

David Lean directs Trevor Howard and and Celia Johnson in Noel Coward's Brief Encounter

Sonatine, for flute and piano, brings early success to French composer Pierre Boulez

The Communists become the largest party in Czechoslovakia, winning 38% of the vote in a free election

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates in favour of his son a month before a referendum on the Italian monarchy

Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff makes his debut in Puccini's La Bohème in Reggio Calabria

Communist leader Enver Hoxha begins nearly 40 years as dictator of Albania

Benjamin Britten bases his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra on a theme by Purcell

Germany's former foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, is sentenced to death at Nuremberg and is hanged

German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler is acquitted of the charge of collaborating with the Nazis

Rationing in Britain gets worse rather than better, with bread and potatoes now added to the list

Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels

British conductor Thomas Beecham founds the third orchestra of his career, calling it the Royal Philharmonic

Winston Churchill, in a speech in Fulton, Missouri, expresses the harsh truth that an iron curtain has descended across Europe

Twelve of the defendants at Nuremberg are sentenced to death by hanging

Hermann Goering, sentenced to death at Nuremberg, kills himself with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he is due to be hanged

An election campaign in Poland, marked by violence and the use of terror, brings a Communist landslide

English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano