This Sceptred Isle Read online

  1587

  Mary, Queen of Scots executed

  1596

  Robert Cecil, Secretary of State

  1600

  British East India Company incorporated

  1601

  Essex executed

  1603

  James I

  1603

  Ralegh treason trial and imprisonment

  1611

  Authorized Version of the Bible

  1616

  Death of William Shakespeare

  1618

  Ralegh executed; Thirty Years War starts

  1625

  Charles I

  1632

  Lord Baltimore granted patent for the settlement of Maryland

  1641

  The Grand Remonstrance issued

  1642

  Civil War starts; Battle of Edgehill

  1643

  Battle of Newbury

  1644

  Battle of Marston Moor

  1645

  New Model Army established

  1649

  Charles I executed; massacres at Wexford and Drogheda

  1651

  Charles II crowned at Scone; Hobbes’ Leviathan published

  1655

  Jamaica captured

  1658

  Cromwell dies

  1660

  Charles II; Declaration of Breda; Pepys begins his diary

  1662

  The Royal Society; Boyle’s Law

  1666

  Fire of London

  1670

  Hudson’s Bay Company

  1673

  Test Act

  1678

  Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

  1685

  James II

  1689

  William III and Mary II

  1690

  Battle of the Boyne

  1692

  Massacre of Glencoe

  1694

  Bank of England

  1695

  Bank of Scotland

  1702

  Queen Anne

  1704

  Battle of Blenheim; capture of Gibraltar

  1707

  Union with Scotland

  1714

  George I

  1719

  Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

  1722

  Walpole, first Prime Minister

  1727

  George II

  1740

  War of Austrian Succession; Arne composes ‘Rule Britannia’

  1742

  Handel’s Messiah

  1746

  Battle of Culloden

  1751

  Clive captures Arcot

  1755

  Dr Johnson’s Dictionary

  1756

  Seven Years War

  1759

  General Wolfe dies at Battle of Quebec

  1760

  George III

  1765

  Stamp Act; Hargreaves’ spinning jenny

  1767

  Revd Laurence Stone’s Tristram Shandy

  1768

  Royal Academy of Arts founded

  1772

  Warren Hastings, first Governor General of Bengal

  1773

  Boston Tea Party

  1774

  Priestley isolates oxygen

  1775

  American Revolution – Lexington and Concord

  1776

  American Declaration of Independence

  1779

  Captain Cook killed in Hawaii

  1780

  Gordon Riots; Epsom Derby

  1781

  Battle of Yorktown

  1783

  Pitt the Younger PM

  1788

  Regency Crisis

  1789

  French Revolution

  1792

  Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man

  1799

  Napoleon

  1801

  Union with Ireland

  1805

  Trafalgar

  1807

  Abolition of Slave Trade Act

  1815

  Waterloo

  1820

  George IV

  1828

  University of London founded

  1829

  Catholic Emancipation Act

  1830

  William IV

  1832

  First Reform Act

  1833

  Abolition of slavery in British colonies Act

  1834

  Houses of Parliament burned down

  1836

  Births, Marriages & Deaths Act

  1837

  Queen Victoria

  1838

  Public Records Office founded

  1839

  Bed Chamber Crisis; Opium War

  1840

  Prince Albert; Treaty of Waitangi

  1843

  Joule’s First Law

  1844

  Rochdale Pioneers; first telegraph line in England

  1846

  Repeal of Corn Laws

  1847

  Marks and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto

  1849

  Punjab conquered

  1850

  Public libraries; Tennyson, Poet Laureate

  1854

  Crimean War; British Medical Association founded

  1855

  Daily Telegraph founded; Palmerston PM

  1857

  Sepoy Rebellion (Indian Mutiny); Trollope’s Barchester Towers

  1858

  Canning, first Viceroy of India

  1859

  Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

  1861

  Prince Albert dies; American Civil War

  1865

  Abraham Lincoln assassinated

  1867

  Second Reform Act; first bicycle

  1868

  TUC

  1869

  Suez Canal opened; Cutty Sark launched

  1870

  Death of Dickens

  1876

  Victoria made Empress of India

  1880

  Gladstone PM

  1881

  First Boer War

  1884

  Third Reform Act

  1885

  Gordon dies at Khartoum

  1887

  Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee

  1891

  Elementary school fees abolished

  1895

  Salisbury PM

  1896

  Daily Mail founded

  1898

  Omdurman

  1899

  Second Boer War

  1900

  Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius

  1901

  Edward VII

  1903

  Suffragettes

  1904

  Entente Cordiale

  1908

  Borstal opened

  1909

  Old Age Pensions

  1910

  George V

  1914

  Irish Home Rule; First World War

  1916

  Lloyd George PM

  1918

  RAF formed from Royal Flying Corps; Marie Stopes

  1919

  John Maynard Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace

  1920

  Black and Tans; Anglican Church in Wales disestablished

  1921

  Irish Free State

  1922

  Bonar Law PM

  1923

  Baldwin PM

  1924

  First Labour Government (MacDonald PM); Baldwin PM; Lenin dies

  1925

  Britain joins Gold standard

  1926

  General Strike

  1928

  Women over twenty-one given vote

  1929

  The Depression; MacDonald PM

  1931

  National Government; Statute of Westminster

  1932
>
  British Union of Fascists

  1933

  Hitler

  1935

  Baldwin PM

  1936

  Edward VIII; George VI; Spanish Civil War

  1937

  Chamberlain PM

  1938

  Austria annexed by Germany; Air Raid Precautions (ARP)

  1939

  Second World War

  1940

  Battle of Britain; Dunkirk; Churchill PM

  1942

  Beveridge Report; fall of Singapore and Rangoon

  1944

  Butler Education Act; Normandy allied landings

  1945

  Attlee PM; Germany and Japan surrender

  1946

  UN founded; National Insurance Act; National Health Service

  1947

  India Independence; Pakistan formed

  1948

  Railways nationalized; Berlin Airlift; Ceylon (Sri Lanka) independence

  1949

  NATO; Irish Independence; Korean War

  1951

  Churchill PM

  1952

  Elizabeth II

  1955

  Eden PM; Cyprus Emergency

  1956

  Suez Crisis

  1957

  Macmillan PM

  1958

  Life Peerages; EEC

  1959

  Vietnam War; Fidel Castro

  1960

  Macmillan’s Wind of Change speech

  1963

  Douglas-Home PM; De Gaulle veto on UK EEC membership; Kennedy assassination

  1964

  Wilson PM

  1965

  Southern Rhodesia UDI

  1967

  Pound devalued

  1969

  Open University; Northern Ireland Troubles; Robin Knox-Johnston first solo, non-stop sailing circumnavigation

  1970

  Heath PM

  1971

  Decimal currency in UK

  1972

  Bloody Sunday, Northern Ireland

  1973

  Britain in EEC; VAT

  1974

  Wilson PM

  1976

  Callaghan PM; first Concorde passenger flight

  1979

  Thatcher PM; Rhodesian Settlement

  1982

  Falklands War

  1985

  Mikhail Gorbachev; Global warming – British report hole in ozone layer

  1986

  Chernobyl; Reagan–Gorbachev Zero missile summit

  1987

  Wall Street Crash

  1988

  Lockerbie

  1989

  Berlin Wall down

  1990

  John Major PM; Iraq invades Kuwait

  1991

  Gulf War; Helen Sharman first Briton in space; Tim Berners-Lee first website; collapse of Soviet Communism

  1992

  Maastricht Treaty

  1994

  Church of England Ordination of Women; Channel Tunnel opens

  1995

  British forces to Sarajevo

  1996

  Dolly the Sheep clone

  1997

  Blair PM; Diana Princess of Wales dies; Hong Kong returns to China

  1998

  Rolls-Royce sold to BMW; Good Friday Agreement

  1999

  Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections

  2001

  Terrorist attacks on New York

  2002

  Elizabeth the Queen Mother dies

  2003

  Second Gulf War

  2004

  Asian Tsunami

  2005

  Freedom of Information Act; Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles wed; terrorist attacks on London

  2006

  Queen’s eightieth birthday

  2007

  Ministry of Justice created; Brown PM

  2008

  Northern Rock collapse

  2009

  Market crash; banks partly nationalized; MPs expenses scandal

  2010

  Cameron PM. First post-Second World War British Coalition Government

  Acknowledgements

  No book writes itself. Even revised versions and updates rely on people who encourage and those who help as a matter of course or because it is something they do every day, even without knowing who the author is or seeing the bigger picture. In these times, we should thank the people who compile and post piles of information on the internet. Yet, I still cannot bring myself to use the World Wide Web as a research tool – one day, I suppose, but not yet. Sitting on a library committee during 2010, I found myself arguing for the purchase of a reference work rather than relying on readers to download. I was surprised by the depth of argument for the internet version. There is something very special about handling paper and turning pages – and anyway, who needs pop-ups and cookies in their lives? Maybe it is generational.

  It’s not surprising then that this author would say a huge thank you to the always patient staff at the British Library’s Rare Books and Music Reading Room. Also, to the Senate Library at the University of London and the Institute for Historical Research. Thanks are ever due to the careful research of Nick Beale. To the many who advised I am in debt and grateful even if I do not mention all of them by name. Some must be known. Hazhir Teimourian encouraged me over his good lunches and said keep going when I wondered if I was doing the right thing. My editor, Andreas Campomar, helped by never rushing me when good Catholic guilt inside me insisted that I was falling behind the run rate. We both tacitly understood that I would be watched over by Howard Watson – an exceptional copy editor with the confidence an author too often needs (well at least this one does). My biggest Thank You letter is to my sometime publisher, now my agent and always my friend, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson who has never sent nor received an email or made a mobile telephone call, and does not care that Google is a verb.

  Introduction

  The original edition of This Sceptred Isle was generously received at seemingly every level. It set out to explain the story of these, the British islands. Later volumes covered the twentieth century and, most importantly, the origins, growth and end of British colonial and imperial history. Put together, the three books suggested the character of the people who became the modern-day British and to some extent the making of Britishness. However, the three volumes were never intended to define Britishness nor specifically trace its progress. Three separate volumes could not do that to my satisfaction. The task in this single volume therefore is firstly to tell the whole story from the Romans to the twenty-first century, including stronger emphasis from the seventeenth century on colonial and imperial history, and to make all the connections with institutions and changing industrial and social characteristics that produce, in loose terms, that which we call Britishness. I have long believed that Britishness as others would see it is an image created inadvertently by Winston S. Churchill during the Second World War. Consequently, anomalies occur when, for example, we consider that Britishness is not exclusively British. Moreover, British may have a number of definitions; not all those definitions may be compatible with the term’s popular, even universal, image. Yet it would appear that it is nonsense to suggest anyone can be British; surely, the first qualification is to be English, Scots or Welsh. The province of Northern Ireland, founded as recently as 1921, is in the United Kingdom but not part of Great Britain; is it then denied a Britishness status? Certainly a large part of its population would not easily embrace membership of the Britishness club.

  Yet there is no exclusivity to Britishness. In theory you simply need to adopt the language, the mannerisms and the style – that is the superficial make-up of being British. The Anglo-Saxon connection between the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is an obvious language-based transfer of identity.

  If there is a determining factor to identifying Britishness it is the history
of the British Isles. It is the tracing of the growth and composition of the peoples of these islands, together with the institutions that influence the character of those peoples and determine the social and political patterns and securities of their lives, that suggest Britishness is an evolving characteristic. Moreover, the British have absorbed and in many cases chosen the influences on the tones of their societies since Saxon times. This fortune (and let us suppose for a moment that this is what it is) is quite unlike the times of those living on Continental Europe; their ancestry has been crisscrossed by armies and migrating populations. Consequently, influences on their national character, including their language and customs, have been imposed rather than chosen.