1916 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister
• * H. H. Asquith
• * David Lloyd George
• Parliament – 30th

  Events

• 1 January – the Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion using blood that has been stored and cooled.
• 9 January – World War I: Battle of Gallipoli: last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul.
• 27 January – conscription introduced by the Military Service Act; applies to unmarried men aged 18-41 from 2 March and to married men in the same age bracket from April/May; it does not extend to Ireland.
• 1 February – night-long German Zeppelin raid on the West Midlands of England, claiming at least 35 lives; Tipton suffers the heaviest losses, with 14 fatalities.
• 1 March – transfer of the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth into its purpose-built premises is completed.
• 4 March – third war budget raises income tax to five shillings in the pound.
• 10 March – Sir Hubert Parry writes the choral setting of William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time", which becomes known as "Jerusalem".
• 22 March – marriage of J. R. R. Tolkien and Edith Bratt at St. Mary Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Warwick. They will serve as the inspiration for the fictional characters Beren and Lúthien.
• 25 March – Military Medal instituted as a military decoration for personnel of the British Army and other services below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land.
• 1/2–5/6 April – nightly German Navy airship raids on England.
• 2 April – munitions factory explosion at Uplees near Faversham, Kent, kills 108 men.
• 7 April – Garrick Theatre fire, Hereford: 8 young girls appearing in an amateur benefit evening performance for soldiers are killed when their costumes catch fire.
• 24–30 April – Easter Rising in Ireland: Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the British Army.
• 24 April–19 May – Voyage of the James Caird, an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition following the loss of its ship Endurance.
• 25 April – German battlecruisers and Zeppelins bombard Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth.
• 27 April – Gas attack at Hulluch in France: 47th Brigade, 16th Division, decimated in one of the most heavily concentrated gas attacks of the war.
• 29 April – Siege of Kut ends with the surrender of British forces to the Ottoman Empire at Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris in Basra Vilayet during the Mesopotamian campaign.
• 2 May – eight German Zeppelins raid the east coast of England.
• 16 May – the UK and France conclude the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of the war, into French and British spheres of influence.
• 21 May – daylight saving time introduced.
• 31 May–1 June – Battle of Jutland between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea, World War I's only large-scale clash of battleships. The result is tactically inconclusive but British dominance of the North Sea is maintained. Prince Albert is present as an officer.
• 5 June – HMS Hampshire sinks having hit a mine off Orkney with Lord Kitchener aboard. 737 lives, including Kitchener, were lost.
• 12 June – Whit Monday bank holiday abandoned.

• 1 July–18 November – Battle of the Somme: More than one million soldiers die; with 57,470 British Empire casualties on the first day, 19,240 of them killed, the British Army's bloodiest day; the Accrington Pals battalion is effectively wiped out in the first few minutes. The immediate result is tactically inconclusive.
• 25 July – North of Scotland Special Military Area declared, restricting access by non-residents to everywhere north of the Great Glen. Other areas so designated this year are the Isle of Sheppey, Newhaven, Harwich, Dover and Spurn.
• 27 July – English civilian ferry captain Charles Fryatt is executed at Bruges after a German court-martial condemns him for attempting to ram a U-boat in 1915.
• 3 August – the musical comedy Chu Chin Chow, written, produced, directed and starring Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, premières at His Majesty's Theatre in London. It will run for five years and a total of 2,238 performances, a record that will stand for nearly forty years.
• 7 August – August bank holiday abandoned.
• 10 August – the official documentary propaganda film The Battle of the Somme is premièred in London. In the first six weeks of general release 20 million people view it.
• 21–24 August – Low Moor Explosion: A series of explosions at a munitions factory in Bradford kills 40 people and injures over 100.
• 2 September – William Leefe-Robinson becomes the first pilot to shoot down a German airship over Britain.

• 15–22 September – Battle of Flers–Courcelette in France: British advance. The battle is significant for the first use of the tank in warfare. The Prime Minister's son, Raymond Asquith, is killed in action.
• 24 September – following a bombing raid on east London, German Zeppelin LZ76 carrying military number L 33 makes a forced landing at Little Wigborough in Essex; its crew are the only armed enemy personnel to set foot in England during the War.
• 6 October – a British Army Order removes the requirement for soldiers to wear moustaches.
• 26–27 October – first Battle of Dover Strait: German torpedo boats attack the Dover Barrage.
• 27 October – life-boat William and Emma from Salcombe Lifeboat Station capsizes on service off the south Devon coast with the loss of all 13 crew.
• 21 November – hospital ship, designed as the third for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine. 30 lives are lost and, at 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the War.
• 28 November – first bombing of central London by a fixed-wing aircraft when a German LVG C.II biplane drops 6 bombs near Victoria station.
• 5 December – Asquith resigns; on 6 December Lloyd George is invited to succeed him as Prime Minister, which he does on 7 December.
• 11 December – Lloyd George establishes a War Cabinet; Lord Derby succeeds him as War Minister; Ministry of Labour formed.
• 22 December – the Sopwith Camel biplane fighter aircraft makes its maiden flight at Brooklands.
• 31 December – Douglas Haig promoted to Field marshal.

  Undated

• The Kent village of Hampton-on-Sea is abandoned due to coastal erosion.
• Mary Hare School is founded as Dene Hollow School for the Deaf, originally in Burgess Hill.
• Gustav Holst completes composition of his orchestral suite The Planets, Opus 32.
• White-tailed sea eagle last breeds in the UK, on Skye.

  Publications

• Robert Baden-Powell's The Wolf Cub's Handbook.
• John Buchan's wartime thriller Greenmantle.
• Sir Oliver Lodge's spiritualist text Raymond; or, Life and death
• Charlotte Mew's poetry The Farmer's Bride.
• Charles Hamilton Sorley's posthumous Marlborough and Other Poems.
• The first Wheels poetry anthology Wheels 1916 edited by the Sitwells.

  Births

• 2 January – Edmund Leopold de Rothschild, financier
• 6 January – Adrian Beers, double bass player
• 9 January – Peter Twinn, mathematician and World War II code-breaker
• 28 January – David Stanley Evans, astronomer
• 1 February – Jack Lyons, financier
• 2 February – John Bridgeman, sculptor
• 4 February – Gavin Ewart, poet
• 6 February – John Crank, physicist
• 13 February – John Reed, actor and opera singer
• 14 February – Sally Gray, born Constance Stevens, film actress
• 15 February – Ernest Millington, politician
• 16 February – Frank Blackmore, traffic engineer
• 11 March – Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 17 March – Ray Ellington, singer
• 29 March – John Paul, colonial administrator
• 2 April – John Saville, Marxist historian
• 11 April – David Smiley, Army officer
• 7 May – Huw Wheldon, broadcaster
• 20 May – Owen Chadwick, religious historian
• 22 May – Rupert Davies, television actor
• 29 May – Arthur Seldon, economist
• 31 May
• *Judy Campbell, actress
• *Bernard Lewis, historian
• 8 June – Francis Crick, molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• 15 June – Stephen Terrell, barrister and politician
• 20 June – Johnny Morris, television presenter
• 23 June – Len Hutton, cricketer
• 1 July – Olivia de Havilland, Tokyo-born film actress
• 9 July – Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 11 July – Reg Varney, actor
• 20 July – Mary Barclay, actress
• 29 July – Max Faulkner, golfer
• 31 July – Brenda Rawnsley, arts campaigner
• 18 August – Moura Lympany, born Mary Johnstone, classical pianist
• 20 August – Bernard Archard, actor
• 21 August – Geoffrey Keen, actor
• 30 August – John Thoday, geneticist
• 12 September – William Woodruff, historian
• 13 September – Roald Dahl, author
• 14 September – Cledwyn Hughes, politician
• 17 September – Mary Stewart, born Mary Rainbow, romantic suspense novelist
• 19 September – Giles Romilly, journalist
• 29 September – Carl Giles, cartoonist
• 3 October
• * Peter Cundy, World War II pilot
• * James Herriot, born James Alfred Wight, veterinarian and author
• * Frank Pantridge, cardiologist
• 10 October – Gerald Davis, philatelist
• 17 October – Robert S. Baker, television producer
• 19 October – Michael Pollock, admiral
• 11 November
• *Robert Carr, politician
• *Katharina Dalton, physicist
• 24 November – James Pope-Hennessy, biographer and travel writer
• 28 November – Lilian, Princess of Réthy, born Mary Lilian Baels, English-born Belgian queen consort
• 2 December – John Bentley, actor
• 9 December
• * I. J. Good, mathematician and cryptologist
• * James Brian Tait, RAF pilot
• 17 December – Penelope Fitzgerald, born Penelope Knox, poet, essayist and biographer
• 19 December
• * Jack Agazarian, World War II spy
• * Roy Baker, film director
• 25 December – John McManners, clergyman and historian

  Deaths

• 30 January – Sir Clements Markham, geographer, explorer and writer
• 14 February – Reginald Alexander, physician
• 23 February – Jabez Balfour, businessman, politician and fraudster
• 28 February – Henry James, novelist
• 11 March – Florence Baker, explorer
• 31 May – Sir Horace Hood, admiral
• 5 June – Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, field marshal, diplomat and statesman
• 12 June – Silvanus P. Thompson, professor, member of the Royal Society and author
• 10 July – Robert Bickersteth, politician
• 23 July – William Ramsay, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 27 July – Charles Fryatt, mariner
• 29 July – Eleanor Vere Boyle, watercolourist and illustrator
• 3 August – Roger Casement, Irish nationalist
• 5 August – George Butterworth, composer
• 28 September – Richard Thomas, tin plate manufacturer
• 14 November – Saki, short-story writer
• 23 November – Lanoe Hawker, fighter pilot
• 5 December – Augusta of Cambridge, member of the Royal Family