1901 Queen Victoria
dies. Edward
VII . World Fair in
Paris 1902 London has got 6.5
million inhabitants. 1902 Joseph Conrad:
Heart of Darkness 1905 Sinn
Fein
founded. 1906 Picadilly Line of
London
Underground
opened 1907 Joseph Conrad:
The Secret Agent 1908 -
1916 Herbert
Henry Asquith
(Liberal) Prime Minister 1909 William
Howard Taft
27th President of the U.S. (till
1913) 1910 Mark Twain and Leo
Tolstoi die. George
V "The
Georgian Period" "Modernism" 1912 first non-stop
flight from Paris to London. The Titanic
sinks on its maiden voyage. 1913 Demonstrations of
the suffragettes
in London. Sylvia and Emily Pankhurst
arrested. Woodrow
Wilson is
elected president in the U. S. (till
1921) 1913 British film
censorship starts 1914 Assassination of
Archduke Francis Ferdinand of
Austria-Hungary in Sarajewo. Beginning of
World War I. Germany declares war on
Russia and France and invades Belgium.
Great Britain declares war on Germany.
Austria declares against Russia. Serbia
declares war on Germany. France and
Britain declare war on Austria. Austria
declares war on Belgium. Russia, Britain
and France declare war on Turkey. First
German bomb on London. .1914 James Joyce:
Dubliners 1916 Battle of the
Somme. Easter
Rising in Dublin
leads to civil war in Ireland.
David
Lloyd-George
Prime minster (Welsh Liberal) till
1922 . Dada
formed in Cabaret Voltaire,
Zurich. 1917 The Germans begin
all out submarine warfare. "House of
Windsor" adopted as the British Royal
Family's official name, replacing the
historic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
October
Revolution:
Victory of the Bolshewists in Russia. The
new Soviet Union signs an armistice with
Germany. 1918 Women over 30 vote
for the first time in a general election
in Britain. 1919 Treaty of
Versailles ends World War I.
Irish
Republican Army
founded. 1921 Warren
G. Harding
US president till 1923 1922 Irish Free State
(later to become the Irish Republic).
Fascists take power in Italy (Mussolini).
Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative) Prime
Minister till 1923. 1922 James Joyce:
Ulysses. T. S. Eliot: The Waste
Land 1923 Stanley
Baldwin
(Conservative) Prime Minister (1923-24,
1924-29,1935-37) 1924 first Labour
Gouvernment under James
Ramsey MacDonald 1925 Hitler founds Nazi
party in Germany. 1925 George Bernard Shaw
is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Hitler: Mein Kampf Virginia Woolf:
Mrs Dalloway Fitgerald: The
Great Gatsby 1926 Queen Elizabeth I
born. General
Strike in
Britain. . Alban Berg:
Wozzeck 1927 Charles Lindbergh
flies non-stop from New York to Paris in
the "Spirit of St. Louis." . The
Shakespeare Memorial
Theatre at
Stratford is destroyed by fire. 1928 Sir Alexander
Fleming discovers penicillin. The actress
Ellen Terry dies. 1929 Labour becomes the
largest single party for the first time.
Trotsky is thrown out of the U.S.S.R. 1930 Maugham: Cakes
and Ale; Evelyn Waugh: Vile
Bodies; Noel Coward: Private
Lives 1931 Labour Party
defeated. James
Ramsey MacDonald
Prime Minister. National Government
composed of all parties 1932 Oswald
Mosley
founds a fascist party (British Union
of Fascists) 1932 Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre
(Stratford) reopened. 1933 Italy invades
Ethopia. 33rd US President:
Franklin
D. Roosevelt
(till 1945) 1935 first Penguin
paperbacks Eduard
VIII 1936 Edward VIII
abdicates after 325 days (because of his
relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson). his
younger brother becomes George
VI George
VI 1937 Neville
Chamberlain
(Conservative) Prime Minister (till
1940). . Pablo Picasso:
Guernica 1938 Sigmund Freud in
London 1939 Nazi-Soviet
Nonaggression
Pact.
Germany invades Poland. Beginning of Wold
War II. . James Joyce:
Finnegan's Wake; Flann O' Brian:
At Swim Two Birds 1940 Battle of Britain,
London Blitz . Hemingway: For
Whom the Bell Tolls. Graham Greene:
The Power and the Glory. 1941 Orson Welles:
Citizen Kane 1943 Films:
Casablanca, For Whom the Bell
Tolls 1944 Russians break the
siege of Leningrad. The Allies land in
Normandy (June 6th: D-Day) 1945 Clement
Richard Attlee
Prime Minister (Labour) till 1951. U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies.
Mussolini killed. Germany surrenders. US
President Harry
S. Truman
authorizes the dropping of the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. . George Orwell:
Animal Farm 1950 War in Korea.
Senator Joseph
R. McCarthy,
a Republican from Wisconsin, claims to
have a list of 205 known communists in the
State Department. 1951 Sir
Winston Churchill
Prime Minister (Conservative Party) till
1955 1952 Hemingway': The
Old Man and the Sea; John Steinbec:k
East of Eden, Elizabeth
II "Modernism" "Postmodernism" 1953 General
Dwight
D. Eisenhower
is elected president of the United States
(remains till 1961). Death of Stalin. Sir
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquer
Everest. . Sir Winston
Churchill rewarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature for his six volume history of
World War II (1948-1954) 1954 The French leave
Vietnam. Vietnam is divided. Dylan Thomas:
Under Milk Wood 1955 Sir
Winston Churchill
resigns. Anthony
Robert Eden
(Conservative Party) till 1957. Sputnik
launched. 195.5 Disneyland opens in
Anaheim, California. 1956 1957 Suez Crisis. Eden
resigns 1958 Nikita Khrushchev
General Secretary of the USSR . Sillitoe: The
Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner 1961 John
F. Kennedy
president of the US. Us attack at the Bay
of Pigs in Cuba fails: Cuba Crisis
(1961-62). The Berlin wall is built. Yuri
Gagarin first man in space. . Joseph Heller:
Catch 22 1962 A. Burgess: A
Clockwork Orange 1963 Harold
Wilson
(Labour Party) Prime Minister. (till
1976) . Martin Luther King:
"I have a dream" speach. 1964 Civil Rights Act
outlaws racial discrimination in US.
1965 Capital punishment
abolished in Britain. First anti-Vietnam
war march in Washington 1965 Bob Dylan Like a
Rolling Stone 1967 Alice B. Toklas
dies . 1968 Assassination of
Martin Luther King in Memphis. Vietnam
War: Massacre in My Lai. Prague Spring;
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Revolution
in Paris. 1968 Theatres Act:
Abolition of censureship 1969 Richard
M. Nixon president
of the US. Neil Armstrong the first man on
the moon. . Woodstock (pop
music festival). 1970 Harold
Wilson
(Labour) resigns as Prime Minister.
Edward
Heath
(Conservative Party) till 1974, succeeded
by Harold
Wilson
(Labour). . Paul McCartney
announces breakup of the Beatles. Jimmy
Hendrix and Janis Joplin die. 1972 Watergate
scandal in US 1973 cease-fire in
Vietnam . Thomas Pynchon:
Gravity's Rainbow 1974 Harold
Wilson
(Labour) Prime Minister till 1976. Nixon
impeached for covering up Watergate,
abdicates. Gerald
Ford (till
1977) 1976 Wilson unexpectedly
resigns; Callaghan
succeeds him as PM (till 1979) 1977 Jimmy
Carter (Democrat)
elected as 39th US president. (till
1981) 1979 Margareth
Thatcher
("Iron Lady") Conservative Prime Minister
(till 1990) . V.S. Naipaul, A
Bend in the River 1980 Umberto Eco: The
Name of the Rose 1981 Ronald
Reagan
elected as 40th US president (till
1989) 1982 1985 -
1991 Michael Gorbachov
General Secretary in USSR 1988 Salman Rushdie:
The Satanic Verses 1989 George
Bush 41st
American president (till 1993). Berlin
Wall comes down. Ayatollah Khomeini
pronounces Fatwa
(death sentence) for Salman
Rushdie. 1990 John
Mayor Conservative
Prime Minister (till 1997). Iraqi troops
invade Kuwait. Gulf
War . First McDonald's
opened in Russia. 1991 Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty signed in Moscow. Boris
Yeltzin elected as President of Russia.
End of Cold War. The USSR dissolved into
15 nations. Gorbachev resigns as head of
CP 1993 Bill
Clinton
42nd American president (till
2001) 1997 Antony
Blair (Labour)
PM 1998 Film:
Shakespeare in Love 2001 George
W. Bush
elected as 43rd president of the
US. 16th
century
(1509 - 1603) Henry VIII - Edward VI - Mary I - Elizabeth
I
Edward
VII
1901-1910
Theodore
Roosevelt
26th President of the U.S.
Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon
1910-1936
D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion.
Stravinsky: Rite of
Spring
Nancy, Lady Astor, MP for Portsmouth is
the first woman to take her seat in the
House of Commons.
Irish
Declaration of Independence
Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Tractatus
Calvin
Coolidge US
president till 1929.
Charles Chaplin: The Gold
Rush
Kafka: The Castle
Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd
Hemingway: Fiesta (The Sun Also
Rises)
A. A. Milne:
Winnie The Pooh
Dame Nellie Melba gives her farewell
performance at Covent Garden.
Virginia Woolf: To the
Lighthouse
D. H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's
Lover
Brecht/Weill:
Dreigroschenoper
Herbert
Hoover
becomes 32nd president of the US. New
York: Stock Market crashes (Black
Thursday, Beginning of the Great
Depression)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
F.R. Leavis: New Bearings in
English Poetry
1936
1936-1952
"Modernism"
German bombers under Franco attack
civilians in Guernica in The Spanish Civil
War.
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of
Wrath
Films: Gone with the Wind, The
Wizard of Oz
Sir
Winston Churchill
Prime Minister (Conservative Party) till
1945
Charles Chaplin: The Great
Dictator
Benjamin Britten A Young Person's
Guide to the Orchestra
Dmitri Shostakovich 9th
Symphony
1952 -
"The Beat Generation"
Arthur Miller: The Crucible
Beckett: An attendant Godot
(French)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations
Kinsey: Sexual Behavior of the
Human Female
Webmaster born.
Nabokov: Lolita. T. Williams,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Film: Ingmar Bermann, The Seventh
Seal.
Maurice
Harold MacMillan
(Conservative Party) PM till 1963.
Succeeded by Sir
Alec Douglas Home
(Conservative Party, till 1965)
Andy Warhol: Campbell Soup
Cans
"March on Washington" by the Civil Rights
Movement. John F. Kennedy killed in
Dallas, Texas; followed by
Lyndon
B. Johnson
(till 69). Escalation
of the war in Vietnam.
The Autobiography of Malcolm
X
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead
Beatles: All You Need is Love,
Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane,
Michelle, Yesterday
Summer of Love in San
Francisco
Noam Chomsky Language and Mind.
Rock Musical Hair. The Beatles:
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band
Films: 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Rosemary's Baby
Films: Apocalypse Now, The Tin
Drum,
Film: A Fish Called Wanda, Rain
Man
17th
century
(1603 - 1702) James I - Charles I - Commonwealth - Charles
II - James II - William III and Mary II
18th
century
(1702 - 1820) Anne - George I - George II - George III
19th
century
(1760 - 1901) George III - George IV - William IV -
Victoria
20th
century
(1901 - today) Edward VII - George V - Edward VIII - George
VI - Elizabeth II