A concise guide to key events, people and places in English history and how England has come to be what it is today. From prehistoric England, Stonehenge and the Romans to modern times.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 10,000 BC: Prehistoric England
• 3,000 Bc: Stonehenge
• ad 43: The Romans
• ad 61: Boudicca
• 410: Legend of King Arthur
• 400s: Anglo-Saxons
• 597: The arrival of Christianity
• 793: Viking raids
• 899: Alfred the Great
• 937: Rex Angloram
• 1042: Edward the Confessor
• 1066: King Harold
• 1066: Battle of Hastings
• 1060s and 70s: Norman Conquest
• 1086: Domesday Book
• 1170: Murder of Thomas Becket
• 1204: Eleanor of Aquitaine
• 1215: King John and the Magna Carta
• 1200s: Robin Hood
• 1265: The first Parliament
• 1283: The Conquest of Wales
• 1337: The Hundred Years War
• 1348: Order of the Garter
• 1348: The Black Death
• 1381: The Peasants’ Revolt
• 1387: The Canterbury Tales
• 1415: Agincourt
• 1459: The Wars of the Roses
• 1483: The Princes in the Tower
• 1485: The Battle of Bosworth Field
• 1509: Henry VIII
• 1534: Anne Boleyn
• 1534: The English Reformation
• 1547: Henry VIII’s death
• 1553: Mary I and the Counter- Reformation
• 1558: Elizabeth I
• 1580: Sir Francis Drake
• 1587: Mary Queen of Scots
• 1588: The Spanish Armada
• 1590: Shakespeare
• 1603: King James VI and I
• 1605: The Gunpowder Plot
• 1629: Charles I and Parliament
• 1642: The English Civil War
• 1649: Regicide
• 1649: Cromwell’s Commonwealth
• 1660| Restoration
• 1666: Great Fire of London
• 1687: Sir Isaac Newton
• 1688: The Glorious Revolution
• 1707: The Act of Union
• 1714: The House of Hanover
• 1721: Britain’s first Prime Minister
• 1739: Highwaymen
• 1740: Rule, Britannia!
• 1745: Jacobite uprising
• 1755: Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
• 1763: The Seven Years War
• 1700s: Food and Empire
• 1770: Captain Cook and Australia
• 1772: The Slave Trade
• 1775: Britain’s first factories
• 1776: American Revolution
• 1776: Steam engine
• 1788: Mad King George
• 1791: Rights of Man
• 1805: The Battle of Trafalgar
• 1813: Jane Austen
• 1815: Duke of Wellington
• 1829: The Metropolitan Police Force
• 1830: The Railway Age
• 1833: Child labour
• 1833: Abolition of the Slave Trade
• 1837: Queen Victoria
• 1846: The workhouse
• 1851: Industrial cities
• 1851: The Great Exhibition
• 1854: Florence Nightingale
• 1859: On the Origin of Species
• 1859: Brunel
• 1859: Big Ben
• 1863: Association Football
• 1870: Charles Dickens
• 1888: Jack the Ripper
• 1899: The Boer War
• 1912: Titanic
• 1913: Emily Davison
• 1914: The First World War
• 1916: The First Day of the Somme
• 1918: Armistice Day
• 1922: The BBC
• 1926: General Strike
• 1936: Abdication
• 1940: Dunkirk
• 1940: The Battle of Britain
• 1941: The Home Front
• 1945: VE Day
• 1948: The NHS
• 1948: The Empire Windrush
• 1953: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
• 1956: Suez Crisis
• 1966: World Cup win
• 1960s: Beatlemania
• 1979: Thatcher becomes Prime Minister
• 1989: Invention of the World Wide Web
• 1994: Opening of the Channel Tunnel
• 1997: Death of Princess Diana
• 1997: Harry Potter
• 2012: London Olympics
• 2016: Brexit
• Conclusion
• Image credits