3. A long and illustrious history

From the Stone Age to the present day: invasions, monarchs, wars, empire and the twentieth century.

Contents549 notes left

Early Britain41
The Middle Ages45
The Tudors and Stuarts (part 1)60
The Tudors and Stuarts (part 2)58
A global power (part 1)65
A global power (part 2)65
A global power (part 3)43
The 20th century65
Britain since 1945 (part 1)52
Britain since 1945 (part 2)55

Early Britain

The first people to live in Britain were hunter-gatherers, in the Stone Age, and for much of that period Britain was connected to the continent by a land bridge.
Britain became permanently separated from the continent by the Channel about 10,000 years ago.
The first farmers arrived in Britain 6,000 years ago, and their ancestors probably came from south-east Europe.
Stonehenge, probably a special gathering place for seasonal ceremonies, stands in what is now the English county of Wiltshire.
Skara Brae on Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, is the best preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe.
Around 4,000 years ago people learned to make bronze; in the Bronze Age they lived in roundhouses and buried their dead in tombs called round barrows.
Bronze Age people were accomplished metalworkers who made tools, ornaments and weapons in bronze and gold.
In the Iron Age people learned to make weapons and tools out of iron, and lived in roundhouses grouped into larger settlements and defended hill forts.
A very impressive Iron Age hill fort can still be seen at Maiden Castle, in the English county of Dorset.
The language of the Iron Age was part of the Celtic language family, and related languages are still spoken in parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Iron Age people made the first coins to be minted in Britain, some inscribed with the names of Iron Age kings; this marks the beginning of British history.

The Romans

Julius Caesar led a Roman invasion of Britain in 55 BC which was unsuccessful, and for nearly 100 years afterwards Britain remained separate from the Roman Empire.
In AD 43 the Emperor Claudius led a new invasion, and the Romans successfully occupied almost all of Britain.
Boudicca, queen of the Iceni in what is now eastern England, was one of the tribal leaders who fought against the Romans; there is a statue of her on Westminster Bridge in London.
Areas of what is now Scotland were never conquered by the Romans.
The Emperor Hadrian built a wall in the north of England to keep out the Picts, the ancestors of the Scottish people.
Parts of Hadrian's Wall, including the forts of Housesteads and Vindolanda, can still be seen, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Romans remained in Britain for 400 years, building roads and public buildings, creating a structure of law and introducing new plants and animals.
The first Christian communities began to appear in Britain during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

The Anglo-Saxons

The Roman army left Britain in AD 410 to defend other parts of the Roman Empire and never returned.
Britain was then invaded by tribes from northern Europe — the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons — whose languages are the basis of modern-day English.
By about AD 600, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were established in Britain, mainly in what is now England.
The burial place of one of the Anglo-Saxon kings was at Sutton Hoo in modern Suffolk, where he was buried with treasure and armour in a ship covered by a mound of earth.
Parts of the west of Britain, including much of what is now Wales, and Scotland, remained free of Anglo-Saxon rule.
The Anglo-Saxons were not Christians when they first came to Britain, and missionaries came during this period to preach Christianity.
St Patrick, a missionary from Ireland who spread Christianity in the north, would become the patron saint of Ireland.
St Columba founded a monastery on the island of Iona, off the coast of what is now Scotland.
St Augustine led missionaries from Rome who spread Christianity in the south, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Vikings

The Vikings came from Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
The Vikings first visited Britain in AD 789 to raid coastal towns and take away goods and slaves, and later stayed to form communities in the east of England and Scotland.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England united under King Alfred the Great, who defeated the Vikings.
Many Viking invaders stayed in the east and north of England, in an area known as the Danelaw, where place names such as Grimsby and Scunthorpe come from the Viking languages.
Anglo-Saxon kings continued to rule what is now England except for a short period of Danish kings, the first of whom was Cnut, also called Canute.
In the north, the threat of Viking attack encouraged the people to unite under one king, Kenneth MacAlpin, and the term Scotland began to be used.

The Norman Conquest

In 1066 William, the Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold, the Saxon king of England, at the Battle of Hastings; Harold was killed in the battle.
William became king of England and is known as William the Conqueror.
The Battle of Hastings is commemorated in a great piece of embroidery known as the Bayeux Tapestry, which can still be seen in France today.
The Norman Conquest was the last successful foreign invasion of England and led to many changes in government and social structures.
Norman French, the language of the new ruling class, influenced the development of the English language.
The Normans initially conquered Wales but the Welsh gradually won territory back; the Normans took over some land on the Scottish border but did not invade Scotland.
The Domesday Book listed the towns and villages of England, the people who lived there, who owned the land and what animals they owned, and still exists today.

The Middle Ages

War at home and abroad

The Middle Ages, or medieval period, broadly spans the thousand years from the end of the Roman Empire in AD 476 up until 1485, and was a time of almost constant war.
In 1284 King Edward I of England introduced the Statute of Rhuddlan, which annexed Wales to the Crown of England.
Huge castles, including Conwy and Caernarvon, were built to maintain English power in Wales.
By the middle of the 15th century the last Welsh rebellions had been defeated, and English laws and the English language were introduced.
In 1314 the Scottish, led by Robert the Bruce, defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland remained unconquered by the English.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages Ireland was an independent country; the English first went there as troops to help the Irish king and remained to build their own settlements.
By 1200 the English ruled an area of Ireland around Dublin known as the Pale, and some important lords elsewhere in Ireland accepted the authority of the English king.
Many English knights took part in the Crusades, in which European Christians fought for control of the Holy Land.
The Hundred Years War against France actually lasted 116 years.
At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, King Henry V's vastly outnumbered English army defeated the French.
The English largely left France in the 1450s.

The Black Death

The Normans used a system of land ownership known as feudalism, under which the king gave land to his lords in return for help in war and landowners had to send certain numbers of men to serve in the army.
Most peasants were serfs: they had a small area of their lord's land where they could grow food, and in return had to work for their lord and could not move away.
Feudalism also developed in southern Scotland, but in the north of Scotland and in Ireland land was owned by members of the clans, or prominent families.
In 1348 a disease, probably a form of plague and known as the Black Death, came to Britain.
One third of the population of England died in the Black Death, and a similar proportion died in Scotland and Wales.
After the Black Death the smaller population meant less need to grow cereal crops, there were labour shortages, and peasants began to demand higher wages.
New social classes appeared after the Black Death, including owners of large areas of land, later called the gentry.
People left the countryside to live in the towns, where growing wealth led to the development of a strong middle class.
In Ireland the Black Death killed many in the Pale, and for a time the area controlled by the English became smaller.

Legal and political changes

Parliament's origins can be traced to the king's council of advisers, which included important noblemen and the leaders of the Church.
There were few formal limits to the king's power until 1215, when King John was forced by his noblemen to agree to a charter of rights called Magna Carta, which means 'the Great Charter'.
Magna Carta established the idea that even the king was subject to the law, protected the rights of the nobility, and restricted the king's power to collect taxes or to make or change laws.
Parliament divided into two Houses: the nobility, great landowners and bishops sat in the House of Lords.
Knights, who were usually smaller landowners, and wealthy people from towns and cities were elected to sit in the House of Commons.
Only a small part of the population was able to join in electing the members of the House of Commons.
The Scottish Parliament had three Houses, called Estates: the lords, the commons and the clergy.
The principle that judges are independent of the government began to be established in the Middle Ages.
In England, judges developed 'common law' by a process of precedence — following previous decisions — and tradition, while in Scotland laws were 'codified', that is, written down.

A distinct identity

After the Norman Conquest the king and his noblemen spoke Norman French and the peasants continued to speak Anglo-Saxon; the two gradually combined into one English language.
'Park' and 'beauty' are modern English words based on Norman French; 'apple', 'cow' and 'summer' are based on Anglo-Saxon, and 'demand' (French) and 'ask' (Anglo-Saxon) are a pair with similar meanings.
By 1400 official documents in England were being written in English, and English had become the preferred language of the royal court and Parliament.
In the years leading up to 1400 Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, poems in English about a group of people going to Canterbury on a pilgrimage and telling each other stories on the journey.
The Canterbury Tales was one of the first books printed by William Caxton, the first person in England to print books using a printing press.
In Scotland many people continued to speak Gaelic and the Scots language also developed; the poet John Barbour wrote The Bruce, about the Battle of Bannockburn, in Scots.
Castles were built in many places in Britain and Ireland, partly for defence; many are now in ruins, but some, such as Windsor and Edinburgh, are still in use.
Great cathedrals such as Lincoln Cathedral were built in the Middle Ages and many are still used for worship.
Several cathedrals had stained glass windows telling stories about the Bible and Christian saints, and the glass in York Minster is a famous example.
England was an important trading nation in the Middle Ages and English wool became a very important export.
Skilled workers came to England from abroad: weavers from France, engineers from Germany, glass manufacturers from Italy and canal builders from Holland.

The Wars of the Roses

In 1455 a civil war began to decide who should be king of England, fought between the supporters of the House of Lancaster and the House of York.
The war was called the Wars of the Roses because the symbol of Lancaster was a red rose and the symbol of York was a white rose.
The war ended with the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, at which King Richard III of the House of York was killed.
Henry Tudor, the leader of the House of Lancaster, became King Henry VII and married King Richard's niece, Elizabeth of York, uniting the two families.
Henry VII was the first king of the House of Tudor, whose symbol was a red rose with a white rose inside it, a sign that the Houses of York and Lancaster were now allies.

The Tudors and Stuarts (part 1)

Religious conflicts

After his victory in the Wars of the Roses, Henry VII strengthened the central administration of England and reduced the power of the nobles.
Henry VII was thrifty and built up the monarchy's financial reserves; his son Henry VIII continued the policy of centralising power.
Henry VIII was most famous for breaking away from the Church of Rome and for marrying six times.
Catherine of Aragon was a Spanish princess; of her children with Henry VIII only Mary survived, and Henry divorced her hoping another wife would give him a son.
Anne Boleyn was English and had one daughter with Henry VIII, Elizabeth; she was accused of taking lovers and executed at the Tower of London.
Jane Seymour, whom Henry married after Anne Boleyn's execution, gave him the son he wanted, Edward, but died shortly after the birth.
Anne of Cleves was a German princess whom Henry VIII married for political reasons and divorced soon after.
Catherine Howard, a cousin of Anne Boleyn, was also accused of taking lovers and executed.
Catherine Parr was a widow who married Henry VIII late in his life; she survived him and married again, but died soon after.
Henry VIII needed the Pope's approval to divorce his first wife, and when the Pope refused he established the Church of England.
In the new Church of England, the king rather than the Pope had the power to appoint bishops and to order how people should worship.
The Reformation was a movement across Europe against the authority of the Pope and the ideas and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
Protestants read the Bible in their own languages instead of in Latin, did not pray to saints or at shrines, and believed a person's own relationship with God mattered more than submitting to the authority of the Church.
Protestant ideas gradually gained strength in England, Wales and Scotland during the 16th century.
In Ireland, English attempts to impose Protestantism and English laws about the inheritance of land led to rebellion from the Irish chieftains and much brutal fighting.
During the reign of Henry VIII, Wales became formally united with England by the Act for the Government of Wales.
Under that Act the Welsh sent representatives to the House of Commons and the Welsh legal system was reformed.
Henry VIII was succeeded by his son Edward VI, who was strongly Protestant.
During Edward VI's reign the Book of Common Prayer was written for use in the Church of England, and a version of it is still used in some churches today.
Edward VI died at the age of 15, after ruling for just over six years.
Edward VI was followed by his half-sister Mary, a devout Catholic who persecuted Protestants and became known as 'Bloody Mary'.
Mary also died after a short reign, and the next monarch was her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I was a Protestant and re-established the Church of England as the official Church in England.
Everyone had to attend their local church and there were laws about the type of religious services and the prayers which could be said, but Elizabeth did not ask about people's real beliefs.
Elizabeth I found a balance between the views of Catholics and of the more extreme Protestants, and so avoided serious religious conflict within England.
In 1588 the English defeated the Spanish Armada, a large fleet sent by Spain to conquer England and restore Catholicism; Elizabeth became one of the most popular monarchs in English history.

The Reformation in Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots

In 1560 the predominantly Protestant Scottish Parliament abolished the authority of the Pope in Scotland and made Roman Catholic religious services illegal.
A Protestant Church of Scotland with an elected leadership was established but, unlike the Church of England, it was not a state Church.
Mary Stuart, 'Mary, Queen of Scots', was a Catholic and was only a week old when her father died and she became queen of Scotland.
Much of Mary Stuart's childhood was spent in France.
After her husband was murdered Mary was suspected of involvement, fled to England, and gave her throne to her Protestant son, James VI of Scotland.
Mary was Elizabeth I's cousin, but Elizabeth suspected her of wanting the English throne and kept her a prisoner for 20 years.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was eventually executed, accused of plotting against Elizabeth I.

Exploration, poetry and drama

The Elizabethan period in England was a time of growing patriotism, a feeling of pride in being English.
English explorers sought new trade routes and tried to expand British trade into the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Sir Francis Drake was one of the commanders in the defeat of the Spanish Armada and one of the founders of England's naval tradition.
Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, was one of the first to sail right around ('circumnavigate') the world.
In Elizabeth I's time English settlers first began to colonise the eastern coast of America, and this colonisation greatly increased in the next century.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and was a playwright and actor.
Shakespeare's most famous plays include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare was one of the first to portray ordinary Englishmen and women rather than only kings and queens, and he invented many words still common in English today.
Often-quoted lines are 'Once more unto the breach' (Henry V), 'To be or not to be' (Hamlet), 'A rose by any other name' (Romeo and Juliet), 'All the world's a stage' (As You Like It) and 'The darling buds of May' (Sonnet 18).
The Globe Theatre in London is a modern copy of the theatres in which Shakespeare's plays were first performed.

James VI and I

Elizabeth I never married and had no children of her own to inherit her throne.
When Elizabeth I died in 1603 her heir was James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England, Wales and Ireland, but Scotland remained a separate country.
A new English translation of the Bible made in King James' reign is known as the 'King James Version' or the 'Authorised Version'.
The King James Version was not the first English Bible, but it continues to be used in many Protestant churches today.

Ireland

During this period Ireland was an almost completely Catholic country.
Henry VII and Henry VIII extended English control outside the Pale and established English authority over the whole of Ireland.
Henry VIII took the title 'King of Ireland'.
English laws were introduced in Ireland and local leaders were expected to follow the instructions of the Lord Lieutenants in Dublin.
During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I many people in Ireland opposed rule by the Protestant government in England and there were a number of rebellions.
The English government encouraged Scottish and English Protestants to settle in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, taking land from Catholic landholders; these settlements were known as plantations.
Many of the new settlers came from south-west Scotland, and other land was given to companies based in London.
James later organised similar plantations in several other parts of Ireland, with serious long-term consequences for England, Scotland and Ireland.

The rise of Parliament

Elizabeth I was very skilled at managing Parliament, balancing her own wishes against the views of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
During Elizabeth I's reign the House of Commons was increasingly Protestant in its views.
James I and his son Charles I were less skilled politically and both believed in the 'Divine Right of Kings': the idea that the king was directly appointed by God to rule and could act without Parliament's approval.
Charles I inherited the thrones of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland and tried to rule in line with the Divine Right of Kings.
For 11 years Charles I found ways to raise money without Parliament's approval, but eventually trouble in Scotland meant he had to recall Parliament.

The Tudors and Stuarts (part 2)

The beginning of the English Civil War

Charles I wanted the worship of the Church of England to include more ceremony and introduced a revised Prayer Book.
Charles I tried to impose the revised Prayer Book on the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, which led to serious unrest and the formation of a Scottish army.
Charles I could not find the money he needed for his own army without the help of Parliament, and in 1640 he recalled Parliament to ask it for funds.
Many in the Parliament of 1640 were Puritans, a group of Protestants who advocated strict and simple religious doctrine and worship.
Parliament refused to give Charles I the money he asked for, even after the Scottish army invaded England.
A rebellion began in Ireland because the Roman Catholics there were afraid of the growing power of the Puritans.
Parliament used the Irish rebellion as an opportunity to demand control of the English army, which would have transferred substantial power from the king to Parliament.
Charles I entered the House of Commons and tried to arrest five parliamentary leaders, but they had been warned and were not there; no monarch has set foot in the Commons since.
Civil war between the king and Parliament began in 1642.
Supporters of the king were called the Cavaliers and supporters of Parliament were called the Roundheads.

Oliver Cromwell and the English republic

The king's army was defeated at the Battles of Marston Moor and Naseby.
By 1646 it was clear that Parliament had won the war, and Charles I was held prisoner by the parliamentary army.
Charles I remained unwilling to reach any agreement with Parliament and was executed in 1649.
England declared itself a republic called the Commonwealth and no longer had a monarch; for a time the army was in control.
Oliver Cromwell, one of the army's generals, was sent to Ireland, where the revolt that had begun in 1641 continued and a Royalist army remained.
Cromwell established the authority of the English Parliament in Ireland with such violence that he remains a controversial figure there today.
The Scots had not agreed to the execution of Charles I; they declared his son Charles II king, crowned him king of Scotland, and he led a Scottish army into England.
Cromwell defeated Charles II's Scottish army at the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester.
Charles II escaped from Worcester, famously hiding in an oak tree on one occasion, and eventually fled to Europe.
After Cromwell's victories Parliament controlled Scotland as well as England and Wales.
Cromwell was recognised as leader of the new republic, was given the title of Lord Protector, and ruled until his death in 1658.
Cromwell's son Richard became Lord Protector in his place but was not able to control the army or the government.
Britain was a republic for 11 years, but without Oliver Cromwell there was no clear leader or system of government and people began to talk about the need for a king.

The Restoration

In May 1660 Parliament invited Charles II to come back from exile in the Netherlands.
Charles II was crowned King Charles II of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Charles II said he had 'no wish to go on his travels again' and understood that he would sometimes need to reach agreement with Parliament, which generally supported his policies.
Under Charles II the Church of England again became the established official Church, and both Roman Catholics and Puritans were kept out of power.
In 1665 there was a major outbreak of plague in London, in which thousands died, especially in poorer areas.
The following year, 1666, a great fire destroyed much of London, including many churches and St Paul's Cathedral.
London was rebuilt with a new St Paul's Cathedral, designed by the famous architect Sir Christopher Wren.
Samuel Pepys wrote about the plague and the great fire in a diary which was later published and is still read today.
The Habeas Corpus Act became law in 1679 and remains relevant today.
Habeas corpus is Latin for 'you must present the person in court'.
The Habeas Corpus Act guaranteed that no one could be held prisoner unlawfully, and that every prisoner has a right to a court hearing.
Charles II was interested in science, and during his reign the Royal Society was formed to promote 'natural knowledge'; it is the oldest surviving scientific society in the world.
Sir Edmund Halley, an early member of the Royal Society, successfully predicted the return of the comet now called Halley's Comet.
Sir Isaac Newton, another early member of the Royal Society, lived from 1643 to 1727 and was born in Lincolnshire, eastern England.
Newton first became interested in science when he studied at Cambridge University.
Newton's most famous published work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ('Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'), showed how gravity applied to the whole universe.
Newton also discovered that white light is made up of the colours of the rainbow.

A Catholic king

Charles II had no legitimate children and died in 1685.
Charles II's brother James, a Roman Catholic, became King James II in England, Wales and Ireland and King James VII of Scotland.
James II favoured Roman Catholics and allowed them to be army officers, which an Act of Parliament had forbidden.
James II did not seek to reach agreements with Parliament and arrested some of the bishops of the Church of England.
James II's heirs were his two daughters, who were both firmly Protestant, so people expected a Protestant monarch to follow him.
When James II's wife had a son, it suddenly seemed likely that the next monarch would not be a Protestant after all.

The Glorious Revolution

James II's elder daughter, Mary, was married to her cousin William of Orange, the Protestant ruler of the Netherlands.
In 1688 important Protestants in England asked William to invade England and proclaim himself king.
There was no resistance when William reached England; James II fled to France and William took over the throne.
William became William III in England, Wales and Ireland and William II of Scotland, and ruled jointly with Mary.
The events were called the 'Glorious Revolution' because there was no fighting in England and because they guaranteed the power of Parliament, ending the threat of a monarch ruling alone as he or she wished.
James II invaded Ireland with the help of a French army in an attempt to regain the throne.
William defeated James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690, an event still celebrated by some in Northern Ireland today.
William re-conquered Ireland and James fled back to France; many restrictions were placed on the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and Irish Catholics were unable to take part in the government.
An armed rebellion in Scotland in support of James was quickly defeated at Killiecrankie.
All Scottish clans were required formally to accept William as king by taking an oath.
The MacDonalds of Glencoe were late in taking the oath and were all killed, and the memory of this massacre meant some Scots distrusted the new government.
Those who continued to believe that James was the rightful king, particularly in Scotland, became known as Jacobites.

A global power (part 1)

Constitutional monarchy – the Bill of Rights

A Declaration of Rights was read at the coronation of William and Mary, confirming that the king could no longer raise taxes or administer justice without the agreement of Parliament.
The balance of power between monarch and Parliament had now permanently changed.
The Bill of Rights of 1689 confirmed the rights of Parliament and the limits of the king's power.
Parliament took control of who could be monarch and declared that the king or queen must be a Protestant.
A new Parliament had to be elected at least every three years; this later became seven years and is now five years.
Every year the monarch had to ask Parliament to renew funding for the army and the navy.
To govern effectively the monarch needed advisers, or ministers, who could ensure a majority of votes in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The two main groups in Parliament were known as the Whigs and the Tories, and the modern Conservative Party is still sometimes referred to as the Tories.
The rivalry of the Whigs and the Tories was the beginning of party politics.
A free press means newspapers and other publications which are not controlled by the government.
From 1695 newspapers were allowed to operate without a government licence, and increasing numbers began to be published.
The laws passed after the Glorious Revolution are the beginning of what is called constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch remained very important but could no longer insist on particular policies or actions if Parliament did not agree.
After William III, the ministers gradually became more important than the monarch, but this was not a democracy in the modern sense.
Only men who owned property of a certain value were able to vote for members of Parliament, and no women at all had the vote.
Constituencies controlled by a single wealthy family were called pocket boroughs.
Constituencies which had hardly any voters were called rotten boroughs.

A growing population

The first Jews to come to Britain since the Middle Ages settled in London in 1656.
Between 1680 and 1720 many refugees called Huguenots came to Britain from France.
The Huguenots were Protestants who had been persecuted for their religion.
Many Huguenots were educated and skilled, and worked as scientists, in banking, or in weaving and other crafts.

The Act or Treaty of Union in Scotland

Queen Anne, the successor of William and Mary, had no surviving children, which created uncertainty over the succession in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.
The Act of Union, known as the Treaty of Union in Scotland, was agreed in 1707 and created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Scotland was no longer an independent country, but it kept its own legal and education systems and its Presbyterian Church.

The Prime Minister

Queen Anne died in 1714, and Parliament chose a German, George I, to be the next king because he was Anne's nearest Protestant relative.
An attempt by Scottish Jacobites to put James II's son on the throne instead of George I was quickly defeated.
George I did not speak very good English, which increased his need to rely on his ministers.
The most important minister in Parliament became known as the Prime Minister.
Sir Robert Walpole was the first man to be called Prime Minister, holding the office from 1721 to 1742.

The rebellion of the clans

In 1745 there was an attempt to put a Stuart king back on the throne in place of George I's son, George II.
Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, was the grandson of James II; he landed in Scotland, was supported by clansmen from the Scottish highlands, and raised an army.
Charles Edward Stuart was defeated by George II's army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and escaped back to Europe.
After Culloden the clans lost a lot of their power and influence: chieftains became landlords if they had the favour of the English king, and clansmen became tenants who had to pay for the land they used.
In the process known as the Highland Clearances, many Scottish landlords destroyed the individual small farms known as crofts to make space for large flocks of sheep and cattle.
Evictions became very common in the early 19th century, and many Scottish people left for North America at this time.
Robert Burns (1759-96), known in Scotland as The Bard, was a Scottish poet.
Robert Burns wrote in the Scots language, in English with some Scottish words, and in standard English.
Robert Burns revised a lot of traditional folk songs by changing or adding lyrics.
Burns' best-known work is probably the song Auld Lang Syne, sung in the UK and other countries to celebrate the New Year, which is called Hogmanay in Scotland.

The Enlightenment

New ideas about politics, philosophy and science developed during the 18th century, in what is often called the Enlightenment.
Many of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment were Scottish.
Adam Smith developed ideas about economics which are still referred to today.
David Hume's ideas about human nature continue to influence philosophers.
James Watt's work on steam power helped the progress of the Industrial Revolution.
One of the most important principles of the Enlightenment was that everyone should have the right to their own political and religious beliefs and that the state should not try to dictate to them, which continues to be an important principle in the UK today.

The Industrial Revolution

Before the 18th century, agriculture was the biggest source of employment in Britain, and there were many cottage industries in which people worked from home to produce goods such as cloth and lace.
The Industrial Revolution was the rapid development of industry in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Britain was the first country to industrialise on a large scale.
The Industrial Revolution happened because of the development of machinery and the use of steam power.
Agriculture and the manufacturing of goods became mechanised, which made things more efficient and increased production.
Coal and other raw materials were needed to power the new factories, and many people moved from the countryside to work in the mining and manufacturing industries.
The development of the Bessemer process for the mass production of steel led to the development of the shipbuilding industry and the railways.
Manufacturing jobs became the main source of employment in Britain.
Canals were built to transport raw materials and manufactured goods, linking factories to towns, cities and ports, particularly in the new industrial areas in the middle and north of England.
There were no laws to protect employees, who were often forced to work long hours in dangerous situations.
Children also worked and were treated in the same way as adults, and sometimes even more harshly.
Richard Arkwright (1732-92) originally trained and worked as a barber, dyeing hair and making wigs, and started to work in textiles when wigs became less popular.
Richard Arkwright improved the original carding machine; carding is the process of preparing fibres for spinning into yarn and fabric.
Richard Arkwright developed horse-driven spinning mills that used only one machine, later used the steam engine to power machinery, and is particularly remembered for the efficient and profitable way that he ran his factories.
Captain James Cook mapped the coast of Australia, and a few colonies were established there.
Britain gained control over Canada, the East India Company (originally set up to trade) gained control of large parts of India, and colonies began to be established in southern Africa.
Sugar and tobacco came to Britain from North America and the West Indies; textiles, tea and spices came from India and the area that is today called Indonesia.
Trading and settlements overseas sometimes brought Britain into conflict with other countries, particularly France, which was expanding and trading in many of the same areas.
Sake Dean Mahomet (1759-1851) grew up in the Bengal region of India, served in the Bengal army, and came to Britain in 1782.
Sake Dean Mahomet moved to Ireland and eloped with an Irish girl called Jane Daly in 1786, returning to England at the turn of the century.
In 1810 Sake Dean Mahomet opened the Hindoostane Coffee House in George Street, London, the first curry house to open in Britain.
Sake Dean Mahomet and his wife introduced shampooing, the Indian art of head massage, to Britain.

A global power (part 2)

The slave trade

Britain's commercial expansion and prosperity was sustained in part by the booming slave trade.
Slavery was illegal within Britain itself, but by the 18th century the slave trade was a fully established overseas industry, dominated by Britain and the American colonies.
Slaves came primarily from West Africa and travelled on British ships in horrible conditions to America and the Caribbean.
Slaves were made to work on tobacco and sugar plantations, and many tried to escape or revolted against their owners.
The first formal anti-slavery groups were set up by the Quakers in the late 1700s, and they petitioned Parliament to ban the practice.
William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian and a member of Parliament, played an important part in changing the law.
Abolitionists were people who supported the abolition of slavery, and they succeeded in turning public opinion against the slave trade.
In 1807 it became illegal to trade slaves in British ships or from British ports.
In 1833 the Emancipation Act abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.
The Royal Navy stopped slave ships from other countries, freed the slaves and punished the slave traders.
After 1833, 2 million Indian and Chinese workers were employed to replace the freed slaves.
Those workers worked on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, in mines in South Africa, on railways in East Africa and in the army in Kenya.

The American War of Independence

By the 1760s there were substantial British colonies in North America, wealthy and largely in control of their own affairs.
Many of the colonist families had originally gone to North America in order to have religious freedom; they were well educated and interested in ideas of liberty.
The British government wanted to tax the colonies, and the colonists said there should be 'no taxation without representation' in the British Parliament.
Parliament tried to compromise by repealing some of the taxes, but relations worsened and fighting broke out between the colonists and British forces.
In 1776, 13 American colonies declared their independence, stating that people had a right to establish their own governments.
The colonists eventually defeated the British army, and Britain recognised the colonies' independence in 1783.

War with France

During the 18th century Britain fought a number of wars with France.
In 1789 there was a revolution in France, and the new French government soon declared war on Britain.
Napoleon became Emperor of France and continued the war against Britain.
Britain's navy defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Admiral Nelson was in charge of the British fleet at Trafalgar and was killed in the battle.
Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London, is a monument to Nelson, and his ship HMS Victory can be visited in Portsmouth.
In 1815 the French Wars ended with the defeat of the Emperor Napoleon by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.
Wellington was known as the Iron Duke and later became Prime Minister.
Ireland had had the same monarch as England and Wales since the time of Henry VIII, but had remained a separate country.
In 1801 Ireland became unified with England, Scotland and Wales after the Act of Union of 1800, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Union Flag, often called the Union Jack, combines crosses associated with England, Scotland and Ireland and is still used today as the official flag of the UK.
The cross of St George, patron saint of England, is a red cross on a white ground.
The cross of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland, is a diagonal white cross on a blue ground.
The cross of St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, is a diagonal red cross on a white ground.
There is also an official Welsh flag, which shows a Welsh dragon.
The Welsh dragon does not appear on the Union Flag because the Principality of Wales was already united with England when the first Union Flag was created in 1606 from the flags of Scotland and England.

The Victorian Age

In 1837 Queen Victoria became queen of the UK at the age of 18.
She reigned until 1901, almost 64 years, and her reign is known as the Victorian Age.
It was a time when Britain increased in power and influence abroad.
Within the UK the middle classes became increasingly significant, and a number of reformers led moves to improve conditions of life for the poor.

The British Empire

During the Victorian period the British Empire grew to cover all of India, Australia and large parts of Africa.
It became the largest empire the world has ever seen, with an estimated population of more than 400 million people.
Between 1853 and 1913 as many as 13 million British citizens left the country to settle overseas.
Between 1870 and 1914 around 120,000 Russian and Polish Jews came to Britain to escape persecution.
Many of those Jewish migrants settled in London's East End and in Manchester and Leeds.
People from the Empire, including India and Africa, also came to Britain to live, work and study.

Trade and industry

The government began to promote policies of free trade, abolishing a number of taxes on imported goods.
The Corn Laws, which had prevented the import of cheap grain, were repealed in 1846, helping British industry by making raw materials cheaper to import.
In 1847 the number of hours that women and children could work was limited by law to 10 hours per day.
Better housing began to be built for workers.
Just before Victoria came to the throne, the father and son George and Robert Stephenson pioneered the railway engine, and a major expansion of the railways took place in the Victorian period.
Railways were built throughout the Empire.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) was an engineer, originally from Portsmouth, who built tunnels, bridges, railway lines and ships, and many of his bridges are still in use today.
Brunel was responsible for constructing the Great Western Railway, the first major railway built in Britain, which runs from Paddington Station in London to the south west of England, the West Midlands and Wales.
British industry led the world in the 19th century, and the UK produced more than half of the world's iron, coal and cotton cloth.
The UK also became a centre for financial services, including insurance and banking.
In 1851 the Great Exhibition opened in Hyde Park in the Crystal Palace, a huge building made of iron and glass.
Exhibits at the Great Exhibition ranged from huge machines to handmade goods, and most of the objects were made in Britain.

The Crimean War

From 1853 to 1856 Britain fought with Turkey and France against Russia in the Crimean War.
It was the first war to be extensively covered by the media through news stories and photographs.
Conditions were very poor and many soldiers died from illnesses they caught in the hospitals rather than from war wounds.
Queen Victoria introduced the Victoria Cross medal during the Crimean War; it honours acts of valour by soldiers.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was born in Italy to English parents and, at the age of 31, trained as a nurse in Germany.
In 1854 she went to Turkey and worked in military hospitals, treating soldiers who were fighting in the Crimean War.
She and her fellow nurses improved the conditions in the hospital and reduced the mortality rate.
In 1860 she established the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first school of its kind, which still exists today.
Florence Nightingale is often regarded as the founder of modern nursing.

A global power (part 3)

Ireland in the 19th century

Conditions in Ireland were not as good as in the rest of the UK, and two-thirds of the population still depended on farming to make their living, often on very small plots of land.
Many people in Ireland depended on potatoes as a large part of their diet.
In the middle of the 19th century the potato crop failed and Ireland suffered a famine.
A million people died from disease and starvation in the famine.
Another million and a half people left Ireland; some emigrated to the United States and others came to England.
By 1861 there were large populations of Irish people in cities such as Liverpool, London, Manchester and Glasgow.
The Irish Nationalist movement grew strongly through the 19th century.
The Fenians favoured complete independence for Ireland.
Charles Stuart Parnell advocated 'Home Rule', under which Ireland would remain in the UK but have its own parliament.

The right to vote

The Reform Act of 1832 greatly increased the number of people with the right to vote.
The Reform Act of 1832 abolished the old pocket and rotten boroughs and gave more parliamentary seats to the towns and cities.
The 1832 Act produced a permanent shift of political power from the countryside to the towns.
Voting after 1832 was still based on the ownership of property, so members of the working class were still unable to vote.
The Chartists were campaigners who presented petitions to Parliament demanding the vote for the working classes and others without property.
The Chartists at first seemed unsuccessful, but another Reform Act followed in 1867.
The Reform Act of 1867 created many more urban seats in Parliament and reduced the amount of property people needed before they could vote.
Even after 1867 the majority of men still did not have the right to vote, and no women could vote.
As the number of voters increased, the political parties began to create organisations to reach out to ordinary voters.
Universal suffrage is the right of every adult, male or female, to vote; it followed in the 20th century.
Until 1870, when a woman got married, her earnings, property and money automatically belonged to her husband.
Acts of Parliament in 1870 and 1882 gave wives the right to keep their own earnings and property.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries women campaigned and demonstrated for greater rights, and in particular the vote; they formed the women's suffrage movement and became known as 'suffragettes'.
Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1858 and died in 1928.
In 1889 Emmeline Pankhurst set up the Women's Franchise League, which fought to get the vote in local elections for married women.
In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst helped found the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the first group whose members were called 'suffragettes'.
The WSPU used civil disobedience: members chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and committed arson.
Many of the women, including Emmeline Pankhurst, went on hunger strike.
In 1918 women over the age of 30 were given voting rights and the right to stand for Parliament, partly in recognition of the contribution women made to the war effort during the First World War.
In 1928, shortly before Emmeline Pankhurst's death, women were given the right to vote at the age of 21, the same as men.

The future of the Empire

The British Empire continued to grow until the 1920s, though its future direction was already being discussed in the late 19th century.
Supporters of expansion believed that the Empire benefited Britain through increased trade and commerce.
Others thought the Empire had become over-expanded, and that frequent conflicts in places such as India's northwest frontier and southern Africa were a drain on resources.
The great majority of British people believed in the Empire as a force for good in the world.
The Boer War of 1899 to 1902 made the discussions about the future of the Empire more urgent.
In the Boer War the British fought in South Africa against settlers from the Netherlands called the Boers.
The Boers fought fiercely and the war went on for over three years; many died in the fighting and many more from disease.
There was some public sympathy for the Boers, and people began to question whether the Empire could continue.
As different parts of the Empire developed they won greater freedom and autonomy from Britain.
By the second half of the 20th century there was, for the most part, an orderly transition from Empire to Commonwealth, with countries being granted their independence.
Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865 and died in 1936; he later lived in India, the UK and the USA.
Kipling wrote books and poems set in both India and the UK, and his work reflected the idea that the British Empire was a force for good.
Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.
Kipling's books include the Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, and his poem If has often been voted among the UK's favourite poems.

The 20th century

The First World War

In the early 20th century Britain, with its expansive Empire, well-admired navy, thriving industry and strong political institutions, was what is now known as a global 'superpower'.
Social measures introduced in the early 20th century included financial help for the unemployed, old-age pensions and free school meals.
Laws were passed to improve safety in the workplace, town planning rules were tightened to prevent the further development of slums, and better support was given to mothers and their children after divorce or separation.
Local government became more democratic and a salary for members of Parliament (MPs) was introduced for the first time.
On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, setting off the chain of events that led to the First World War.
The First World War was fought from 1914 to 1918.
Growing nationalism in many European states, increasing militarism, imperialism and the division of the major European powers into two camps all set the conditions for war.
Britain was part of the Allied Powers, which included France, Russia, Japan, Belgium and Serbia, and later Greece, Italy, Romania and the United States.
The Allies fought against the Central Powers - mainly Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and later Bulgaria.
More than a million Indians fought on behalf of Britain and around 40,000 of them were killed.
Men from the West Indies, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada also fought with the British.
There were more than 2 million British casualties in the First World War.
The British attack on the Somme in July 1916 resulted in about 60,000 British casualties on the first day alone.
The First World War ended at 11.00 am on 11th November 1918 with victory for Britain and its allies.

The partition of Ireland

In 1913 the British government promised 'Home Rule' for Ireland: a self-governing Ireland with its own parliament but still part of the UK.
The Home Rule Bill was opposed by the Protestants in the north of Ireland, who threatened to resist Home Rule by force.
The outbreak of the First World War led the British government to postpone any changes in Ireland.
In 1916 Irish Nationalists staged an uprising against the British in Dublin, the Easter Rising, and its leaders were executed under military law.
A guerrilla war against the British army and the police in Ireland followed the Easter Rising.
A peace treaty was signed in 1921 and in 1922 Ireland became two countries.
The six counties in the north, which were mainly Protestant, remained part of the UK under the name Northern Ireland.
The rest of Ireland became the Irish Free State, with its own government, and became a republic in 1949.
The conflict between those wishing for full Irish independence and those wishing to remain loyal to the British government is often referred to as 'the Troubles'.

The inter-war period

In the 1920s many people's living conditions got better, with improvements in public housing and new homes built in many towns and cities.
In 1929 the world entered the 'Great Depression' and some parts of the UK suffered mass unemployment.
Traditional heavy industries such as shipbuilding were badly affected by the depression of the 1930s.
New industries, including the automobile and aviation industries, developed during the 1930s.
As prices generally fell, those in work had more money to spend, and many new houses were built.
Car ownership doubled from 1 million to 2 million between 1930 and 1939.
The 1930s were a time of cultural blossoming, with writers such as Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh prominent.
The economist John Maynard Keynes published influential new theories of economics.
The BBC started radio broadcasts in 1922 and began the world's first regular television service in 1936.

The Second World War

Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933; he believed the conditions imposed on Germany after the First World War were unfair and wanted to conquer more land.
When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war in order to stop his aggression.
The Axis powers were fascist Germany and Italy and the Empire of Japan.
The main countries on the allied side were the UK, France, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Union of South Africa.
Having occupied Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia, Hitler followed his invasion of Poland by taking control of Belgium and the Netherlands.
In 1940 German forces defeated allied troops and advanced through France, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and Britain's war leader.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a soldier and journalist before becoming a Conservative MP in 1900.
Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 and refused to surrender to the Nazis.
Churchill lost the General Election in 1945 but returned as Prime Minister in 1951.
Churchill was an MP until he stood down at the 1964 General Election; following his death in 1965 he was given a state funeral.
In 2002 Churchill was voted the greatest Briton of all time by the public.
'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat' was Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons after he became Prime Minister in 1940.
'We shall fight on the beaches ... we shall never surrender' came from Churchill's speech to the House of Commons after Dunkirk in 1940.
'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few' came from Churchill's speech during the Battle of Britain in 1940.
Civilian volunteers in small pleasure and fishing boats helped the Navy to rescue more than 300,000 men from the beaches around Dunkirk, giving rise to the phrase 'the Dunkirk spirit'.
From the end of June 1940 until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Britain and the Empire stood almost alone against Nazi Germany.
The British won the crucial aerial battle against the Germans, the Battle of Britain, in the summer of 1940.
The most important planes used by the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain were the Spitfire and the Hurricane, which were designed and built in Britain.
The German air force's night-time bombing of London and other British cities was called the Blitz; Coventry was almost totally destroyed and great damage was done especially in the East End of London.
The phrase 'the Blitz spirit' is still used today to describe Britons pulling together in the face of adversity.
In Singapore the Japanese defeated the British and then occupied Burma, threatening India.
The United States entered the war in December 1941, when the Japanese bombed its naval base at Pearl Harbour.
In 1941 Hitler attempted the largest invasion in history by attacking the Soviet Union; German forces were repelled by the Soviets, which proved a pivotal point in the war.
The allied forces won significant victories in North Africa and Italy.
On 6 June 1944 allied forces landed in Normandy, an event often referred to as 'D-Day'.
The Allies comprehensively defeated Germany in May 1945.
The war against Japan ended in August 1945 when the United States dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Scientists led by New-Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford, working at Manchester and then Cambridge University, were the first to 'split the atom'.
Some British scientists went on to take part in the Manhattan Project in the United States, which developed the atomic bomb.
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) was born in Scotland, moved to London as a teenager and later qualified as a doctor.
Fleming was researching influenza in 1928 when he discovered penicillin.
Penicillin was developed into a usable drug by the scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, and by the 1940s it was in mass production.
Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945, and penicillin is still used to treat bacterial infections today.

Britain since 1945 (part 1)

The welfare state

Although the UK had won the war, the country was exhausted economically and the people wanted change; during the war there had been significant reforms to the education system and people now looked for wider social reforms.
In 1945 the British people elected a Labour government and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister, promising to introduce the welfare state outlined in the Beveridge Report.
In 1948 Aneurin (Nye) Bevan, the Minister for Health, led the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS), which guaranteed a minimum standard of health care for all, free at the point of use.
A national system of benefits was introduced to provide 'social security', so that the population would be protected from the 'cradle to the grave'.
The government took into public ownership (nationalised) the railways, the coal mines and the gas, water and electricity supplies.
In 1947 independence was granted to nine countries, including India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Other colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific achieved independence over the next 20 years.
The UK developed its own atomic bomb and joined the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance of nations set up to resist the perceived threat of invasion by the Soviet Union and its allies.
Britain had a Conservative government from 1951 to 1964, and the 1950s were a period of economic recovery after the war and increasing prosperity for working people.
The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was famous for his 'wind of change' speech about decolonisation and independence for the countries of the Empire.
Clement Attlee (1883-1967) was born in London in 1883; his father was a solicitor and, after studying at Oxford University, Attlee became a barrister.
Attlee gave up the bar to do social work in East London and eventually became a Labour MP.
Attlee was Winston Churchill's Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition government, was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951 and led the Labour Party for 20 years.
Attlee's government nationalised major industries such as coal and steel, created the National Health Service, implemented many of Beveridge's plans and introduced measures to improve the conditions of workers.
William Beveridge (1879-1963), later Lord Beveridge, was a British economist and social reformer who served briefly as a Liberal MP and was later leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords.
Beveridge is best known for the 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services, known as the Beveridge Report, which was commissioned by the wartime government in 1941.
The Beveridge Report recommended that the government find ways of fighting the five 'Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness, and provided the basis of the modern welfare state.
Richard Austen (R A) Butler (1902-82), later Lord Butler, became a Conservative MP in 1923 and became responsible for education in 1941.
Butler oversaw the Education Act 1944, often called 'The Butler Act', which introduced free secondary education in England and Wales.
The division between primary and secondary schools enforced by the Education Act 1944 still remains in most areas of Britain.
Dylan Thomas (1914-53) was a Welsh poet and writer who often read and performed his work in public, including for the BBC.
Dylan Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood was first performed in 1954, after his death, and he wrote the poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night for his dying father in 1952.
Dylan Thomas died at the age of 39 in New York; there are several memorials to him in his birthplace, Swansea, including a statue and the Dylan Thomas Centre.

Migration in post-war Britain

There were labour shortages after the Second World War, and the British government encouraged workers from Ireland and other parts of Europe to come to the UK and help with the reconstruction.
In 1948 people from the West Indies were also invited to come and work in Britain.
During the 1950s there was still a shortage of labour, so further immigration was encouraged for economic reasons and many industries advertised for workers from overseas.
Centres were set up in the West Indies to recruit people to drive buses in Britain.
Textile and engineering firms from the north of England and the Midlands sent agents to India and Pakistan to find workers.
For about 25 years, people from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and (later) Bangladesh travelled to work and settle in Britain.

Social change in the 1960s

The 1960s were a period of significant social change known as 'the Swinging Sixties', with growth in British fashion, cinema and popular music.
Two well-known pop music groups of the time were The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
People started to become better off and many bought cars and other consumer goods.
Social laws were liberalised in the 1960s, for example in relation to divorce and to abortion in England, Wales and Scotland.
It was quite common at the time for employers to ask women to leave their jobs when they got married, but Parliament passed new laws giving women the right to equal pay and making it illegal for employers to discriminate against women because of their gender.
Britain and France developed the supersonic commercial airliner Concorde, and new styles of architecture, including high-rise buildings and the use of concrete and steel, became common.
The number of people migrating from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and what is now Bangladesh fell in the late 1960s because the government passed new laws to restrict immigration, requiring immigrants to have a strong connection to Britain through birth or ancestry.
During the early 1970s Britain admitted 28,000 people of Indian origin who had been forced to leave Uganda.
The television was developed by the Scotsman John Logie Baird (1888-1946) in the 1920s, and in 1932 he made the first television broadcast between London and Glasgow.
Radar was developed by the Scotsman Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973), who proposed that enemy aircraft could be detected by radio waves; the first successful radar test took place in 1935.
Working with radar led Sir Bernard Lovell (1913-2012) to make new discoveries in astronomy; the radio telescope he built at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire was for many years the biggest in the world and continues to operate today.
A Turing machine is a theoretical mathematical device invented in the 1930s by the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-54), whose theory was influential in the development of computer science and the modern-day computer.
The Scottish physician and researcher John Macleod (1876-1935) was the co-discoverer of insulin, used to treat diabetes.
The structure of the DNA molecule was discovered in 1953 through work at British universities in London and Cambridge; Francis Crick (1916-2004), one of those awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery, was British.
The jet engine was developed in Britain in the 1930s by Sir Frank Whittle (1907-96), a British Royal Air Force engineer officer.
Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-99) invented the hovercraft in the 1950s.
Concorde first flew in 1969, began carrying passengers in 1976 and was retired from service in 2003.
The Harrier jump jet, an aircraft capable of taking off vertically, was designed and developed in the UK.
In the 1960s James Goodfellow (1937-) invented the cash-dispensing ATM or 'cashpoint', and the first was put into use by Barclays Bank in Enfield, north London, in 1967.
IVF therapy for infertility was pioneered in Britain by the physiologist Sir Robert Edwards (1925-2013) and the gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe (1913-88), and the world's first 'test-tube baby' was born in Oldham, Lancashire, in 1978.
In 1996 two British scientists, Sir Ian Wilmut (1944-) and Keith Campbell (1954-2012), led a team which was the first to succeed in cloning a mammal, Dolly the sheep.
Sir Peter Mansfield (1933-2017), a British scientist, is the co-inventor of the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner, which enables doctors to obtain exact and non-invasive images of human internal organs.
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), is British, and information was successfully transferred via the web for the first time on 25 December 1990.

Britain since 1945 (part 2)

Problems in the economy in the 1970s

In the late 1970s the post-war economic boom came to an end.
Prices of goods and raw materials began to rise sharply and the exchange rate between the pound and other currencies was unstable.
This caused problems with the 'balance of payments': imports of goods were valued at more than the price paid for exports.
Many industries and services were affected by strikes, which caused problems between the trade unions and the government.
People began to argue that the trade unions were too powerful and that their activities were harming the UK.
In 1972 the Northern Ireland Parliament was suspended and Northern Ireland was directly ruled by the UK government.
Some 3,000 people lost their lives in the decades after 1969 in the violence in Northern Ireland.
Mary Peters (1939-) was born in Manchester and moved to Northern Ireland as a child.
Mary Peters was a talented athlete who won an Olympic gold medal in the pentathlon in 1972.
After her gold medal Mary Peters raised money for local athletics and became the team manager for the women's British Olympic team.
Mary Peters continues to promote sport and tourism in Northern Ireland and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2000 in recognition of her work.

Europe and the Common Market

West Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands formed the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957.
The EEC became a part of the European Union when the EU was formed in 1993.
The UK was a full member of the European Union but did not use the Euro currency.
The UK formally left the European Union on 31 January 2020.

Conservative government from 1979 to 1997

Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman Prime Minister, led the Conservative government from 1979 to 1990.
Her government made structural changes to the economy through the privatisation of nationalised industries and imposed legal controls on trade union powers.
Deregulation saw a great increase in the role of the City of London as an international centre for investments, insurance and other financial services.
Traditional industries, such as shipbuilding and coal mining, declined.
In 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic.
A naval taskforce was sent from the UK and military action led to the recovery of the Falkland Islands.
John Major was Prime Minister after Mrs Thatcher, and helped establish the Northern Ireland peace process.
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) was the daughter of a grocer from Grantham in Lincolnshire, and trained as a chemist and a lawyer.
Margaret Thatcher was elected as a Conservative MP in 1959 and became a cabinet minister in 1970 as the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
In 1975 Margaret Thatcher was elected as Leader of the Conservative Party and so became Leader of the Opposition.
Following the Conservative victory in the General Election in 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister of the UK.
Margaret Thatcher was the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, remaining in office until 1990.
Margaret Thatcher worked closely with the United States President Ronald Reagan.
Margaret Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to recognise and welcome the changes in the leadership of the Soviet Union which eventually led to the end of the Cold War.
Roald Dahl (1916-90) was born in Wales to Norwegian parents and served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
It was during the 1940s that Roald Dahl began to publish books and short stories.
Roald Dahl is most well known for his children's books, although he also wrote for adults, and several of his books have been made into films.
Roald Dahl's best-known works include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and George's Marvellous Medicine.

Labour government from 1997 to 2010

In 1997 the Labour Party led by Tony Blair was elected.
The Blair government introduced a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly (now called the Senedd).
The Scottish Parliament has substantial powers to legislate, while the Welsh Assembly was given fewer legislative powers but considerable control over public services.
In Northern Ireland the Blair government built on the peace process, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998.
The Northern Ireland Assembly was elected in 1999 but suspended in 2002, and was not reinstated until 2007.
Most paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have decommissioned their arms and are inactive.
Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister in 2007.

Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq

Throughout the 1990s Britain played a leading role in coalition forces involved in the liberation of Kuwait, following the Iraqi invasion in 1990, and in the conflict in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia.
Since 2000 British armed forces have been engaged in the global fight against international terrorism and against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
British combat troops left Iraq in 2009.
The UK operates in Afghanistan as part of the United Nations (UN) mandated 50-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition, and at the invitation of the Afghan government.
ISAF is working to ensure that Afghan territory can never again be used as a safe haven for international terrorism, where groups such as Al Qa'ida could plan attacks on the international community.
ISAF is building up the Afghan National Security Forces and helping to create a secure environment in which governance and development can be extended.
International forces are gradually handing over responsibility for security to the Afghans, who will have full security responsibility in all provinces by the end of 2014.

2010 onwards and Brexit

In May 2010, and for the first time in the UK since February 1974, no political party won an overall majority in the General Election.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties formed a coalition, and the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, became Prime Minister.
The Conservative Party won a majority at the general election of 7 May 2015 and David Cameron remained Prime Minister.
The Conservative government called a referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union, which was held on 23 June 2016.
The UK voted by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1% to leave the European Union.
David Cameron was succeeded as Prime Minister after the referendum by Theresa May on 13 July 2016.
Theresa May was in turn succeeded by Boris Johnson on 24 July 2019.
The UK formally left the European Union on 31 January 2020.