1. Incumbents

2. Events
    Undated 

3. Publications

4. Births

5. Deaths

6. See also

7. References

8. External links

Events from the year 1937 in the United Kingdom. Perhaps the most notable event of the year was the coronation of King George VI, who had ascended to the throne at the end of the previous year.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister – Stanley Baldwin (Coalition) (until 28 May), Neville Chamberlain (Coalition) (starting 28 May)
• Parliament – 37th

Events

• 1 January – Safety glass in vehicle windscreens becomes mandatory in the United Kingdom.
• 25 February – UK première of the historical film Fire Over England, providing the first pairing of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.
• 8 March – Prince Edward, the abdicated King Edward VIII, is created Duke of Windsor.
• 12 April – Frank Whittle ground-tests the world's first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby.
• 27 April – National Maritime Museum opened at Greenwich in former Royal Hospital School premises.
• April – nickel-brass twelve-sided threepence coin first introduced.
• May – the Georgian Group is set up as part of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in England.
• 12 May – coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth takes place at Westminster Abbey, London. The BBC makes its first outside broadcast covering the event.^[1] The newly formed social research organisation Mass Observation makes its first survey of social attitudes on this day.
• 21 May – nearly 4000 Basque (and other) child refugees of the spanish Civil War arrive at Southampton.
• 27 May – George VI passes letters patent denying the style of Royal Highness to the wife and descendants of the Duke of Windsor.
• 28 May – Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister after Baldwin's retirement.^[2]
• 3 June – the Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson in the Château de Candé.^[1]
• 1 July – the 999 emergency telephone number is introduced.^[1]
• 2 July – Holditch Colliery Disaster, a coal mining accident in Chesterton, Staffordshire, in which thirty men die following a fire and explosions.^[3]
• 7 July – Peel Commission proposes partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.^[4][5]
• 23 July – Matrimonial Causes Act adds insanity and desertion to infidelity as legitimate grounds for divorce.^[2]
• 28 July – assassination attempt on King George VI in Belfast by the Irish Republican Army.^[6]
• 4 August – return of the British Graham Land Expedition from Antarctica.
• 27 August – Benjamin Britten's string orchestral work Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10, receives its concert première at the Salzburg Festival, bringing the composer to international attention.^[7]
• 30 September – last issue of The Morning Post newspaper before it is absorbed by The Daily Telegraph.
• 6 October – the fictional character 'Mrs. Miniver' first appears in the column on domestic life written by 'Jan Struther' for The Times.^[8]
• 16 October – Jimmy McGrory plays his last match with Celtic F.C., achieving a United Kingdom record of 550 goals scored during his senior career.^[9]
• 4 December – the first issue of children's comic The Dandy, including the character Desperate Dan, is published.^[1]
• 10 December
  • Nobel Prizes announced:
  • Lord Robert Cecil wins the Nobel Peace Prize.^[10]
  • George Thomson wins the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Clinton Davisson "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals".^[11]
  • Walter Haworth wins half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C".^[12]
  • Castlecary rail crash: an express on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line collides into the rear of a local train standing at Castlecary in the snow, due primarily to a signalman's error; 35 are killed.^[13]
• 16 December – the musical Me and My Girl opens in the West End Victoria Palace Theatre; the dance number "The Lambeth Walk" becomes popular.^[14]
• December – the Hawker Hurricane enters service with the Royal Air Force as its first monoplane fighter aircraft (with No. 111 Squadron at Northolt).^[15]

Undated

• Littlewoods, the pools company formed fourteen years ago by Liverpool businessman John Moores, expands to create a department store in Blackpool, Lancashire.^[16]

Publications

• 21 May – Penguin Books launches its Pelican Books sixpenny paperback non-fiction imprint with a 2-volume edition of Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.^[17]
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels Dumb Witness and Death on the Nile.
• A. J. Cronin's medical novel The Citadel.
• C. S. Forester's first Horatio Hornblower novel The Happy Return.
• David Jones' World War I epic In Parenthesis.
• George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel The Hobbit.

Births

• 1 January
  • Anne Aubrey, actress
  • John Fuller, poet and author
• 2 January – Terence Rigby, actor (died 2008)
• 8 January – Shirley Bassey, Welsh-born singer
• 27 January – John Ogdon, pianist (died 1989)
• 30 January – Vanessa Redgrave, actress
• 11 February – Ian Gow, Member of Parliament for Eastbourne assassinated by the IRA (died 1990)^[18]
• 21 February – Jilly Cooper, novelist
• 25 February – Tom Courtenay, actor
• 18 April – Teddy Taylor, politician (died 2017)
• 29 April – Jill Paton Walsh, born Gillian Bliss, novelist
• 1 May
  • Tamsyn Imison, illustrator and educator
  • Una Stubbs, actress
• 12 May – Susan Hampshire, actress
• 13 May – Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio (died 2018)
• 2 June – Rosalyn Higgins, born Rosalyn C. Cohen, President of the International Court of Justice
• 8 June – Gillian Clarke, Welsh poet and playwright
• 21 June – John Edrich, cricketer
• 23 June – Sir Nicholas Shackleton, geologist (died 2006)
• 3 July – Tom Stoppard, Czech-born playwright
• 6 August – Barbara Windsor, actress
• 18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer (died 1996)
• 20 August – Jim Bowen, born Peter Williams, stand-up comedian and television host (died 2018)
• 21 August – Donald Dewar, First Minister of Scotland (died 2000)
• 13 September – Jessica Mann, crime novelist (died 2018)
• 1 October – Matthew Carter, type designer
• 4 October – Jackie Collins, romance novelist (died 2015 in the United States)
• 9 October – Brian Blessed, actor
• 11 October – Bobby Charlton, English footballer
• 16 November – Alan Budd, economist and academic
• 17 November – Peter Cook, comedian and writer (died 1995)
• 27 November – Rodney Bewes, television actor (died 2017)
• 30 November – Ridley Scott, film director
• 10 December – Scott Baker, lawyer and judge
• 26 December – John Horton Conway, mathematician
• 30 December – Gordon Banks, English goalkeeper (died 2019)
• 31 December – Anthony Hopkins, Welsh-born actor

Deaths

• 13 March – Elihu Thomson, engineer and inventor (born 1853)
• 17 March – Austen Chamberlain, English statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (born 1863)
• 19 April – Martin Conway, art critic, politician and mountaineer (born 1856)
• 19 June – J. M. Barrie, novelist and dramatist (born 1860)
• 22 June – Sir Eric Geddes, transport manager and politician (born 1875)
• 22 August – Albert Goodman, politician (born 1880)
• 9 November – Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1866)
• 25 November – Lilian Baylis, theatrical producer (born 1874)
• 9 December — Lilias Armstrong, phonetician (born 1882)

See also

• List of British films of 1937

References

External links

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