1934 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – Ramsay MacDonald
• Parliament – 36th

  Events

• 1 January – establishment of the National Council for Civil Liberties by Ronald Kidd and Sylvia Crowther-Smith.
• 21 January – ten thousand people attend a British Union of Fascists rally in Birmingham, organised by Oswald Mosley.
• 27 March – the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act is passed. Part 1 is designed to restrict betting on racecourses and tracks to a maximum of 104 days. Part 2 prohibits the sale of lottery tickets, primarily directed against the Irish Free State Hospitals' Sweepstake.
• April – Meccano Ltd introduce the first Dinky Toys.
• 3 April – Percy Shaw patents the cat's eye road-safety device.
• 6 April – Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats are awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry.
• 21 April
• * the "surgeon's photograph" of the Loch Ness Monster, much later admitted to be a hoax, is published in the Daily Mail.
• * David Low's cartoon character Colonel Blimp first appears in the London Evening Standard.
• May – The London Zoo penguin pool, designed by Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton Architectural Group with Ove Arup, one of the most significant examples of modern architecture in Britain.
• 4 May – fifty-four-year-old grandmother Mrs G. E. Alington becomes the first woman in Britain to complete a parachute jump, skydiving from 1500 feet over Brooklands Aerodrome.
• 28 May – opening of first Glyndebourne Festival Opera season.
• 29 May – first regular domestic airmail service, inaugurated by Highland Airways between Inverness and Kirkwall.
• 12 July – Petroleum Act vests ownership of all U.K. subterranean oil and natural gas in the Crown.
• 18 July – opening of the Queensway Tunnel beneath the River Mersey by King George V.
• 19 July – 41 squadrons added to the Royal Air Force as part of a new air defence program.
• 4-11 August – British Empire Games held at Wembley Park, London.
• 6 September – the BBC's most powerful long-wave transmitter, Droitwich Transmitting Station, starts transmitting regularly at 200 kilohertz, following test transmissions from 8 May.
• 10 September – the British Graham Land Expedition sets out to explore Graham Land in Antarctica.
• 22 September – Gresford disaster: a gas explosion takes place at Gresford Colliery in Wrexham, north-east Wales, which leads to the death of 266 miners and rescuers, one of the worst tragedies in Welsh mining history.
• 26 September – launching of the liner at Clydebank.
• 29 September – Stanley Matthews makes his debut for the England national football team, beginning a record 23-year international career.
• 29 November – marriage of Prince George, Duke of Kent, to Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, the first this century, and last, foreign-born princess to marry into the British royal family; the wedding is the first to be broadcast live on radio.
• 30 November – London and North Eastern Railway steam locomotive Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman becomes the first officially to exceed 100 miles per hour on test in England.
• 10 December – Arthur Henderson wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 21 December – Special Areas Act provides grants from central government funds to assist regions with high unemployment.

  Undated

• The "British Committee for Relations with Other Countries", which will become the British Council, is set up to foster cultural relations.
• EKCO introduces its distinctive round bakelite radio cabinets.

  Publications

• John Betjeman's guidebook Cornwall, first of the Shell Guides.
• Agatha Christie's novels Murder on the Orient Express and Why Didn't They Ask Evans?.
• Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius.
• James Hilton's novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
• George Orwell's memoir Burmese Days.
• J. B. Priestley's travelogue English Journey.
• Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novel The Nine Tailors.
• Dylan Thomas' first collection 18 Poems, including "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower".
• P. L. Travers' first children's story Mary Poppins.
• Geoffrey Trease's children's story Bows against the Barons.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust.
• P. G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves, the first Jeeves stories written as full-length novels.
• V. M. Yeates' war novel Winged Victory.

  Births

• 8 January – Roy Kinnear, actor
• 12 January – Mick Sullivan, English rugby league footballer
• 14 January – Richard Briers, actor
• 18 January – Raymond Briggs, writer and illustrator
• 20 January – Tom Baker, actor
• 22 January – Graham Kerr, TV cook
• 2 February – Hugh McIlvanney, sports journalist
• 6 February – Roger Becker, tennis player
• 11 February
• *Mary Quant, fashion designer
• *John Surtees, racing driver and motorcyclist
• 17 February – Alan Bates, actor
• 19 February – David Jones, film director
• 24 February – Ray Honeyford, head teacher
• 25 February
• *Bernard Bresslaw, actor
• * Nicholas Edwards, Baron Crickhowell, politician
• 28 February – Ronnie Moran, football captain
• 4 March – John Dunn, radio presenter
• 5 March – Nicholas Smith, actor
• 6 March – John Noakes, children's television presenter
• 11 March – Dilys Laye, actress and screenwriter
• 15 March – Richard Layard, Baron Layard, economist
• 20 March – Eric Hebborn, art forger
• 22 March – Larry Martyn, comic actor
• 28 March – Laurie Taitt, Olympic sprint hurdler
• 1 April – Marie Patterson, English trade union leader
• 2 April – Brian Glover, actor and wrestler
• 3 April – Jane Goodall, primatologist
• 6 April – Brian Cosgrove, animator
• 7 April – Ian Richardson, actor
• 16 April
• *Vince Hill, singer
• *Richard Kershaw, journalist
• *Geoffrey Owen, journalist, academic and businessman
• 3 May – Henry Cooper, boxer
• 5 May – Jim Reid, folk musician
• 8 May – David Williamson, Baron Williamson of Horton, English soldier and politician
• 9 May
• *Alan Bennett, playwright, screenwriter, actor and author
• *David Plastow, English businessman
• 15 May – George Roper, comedian
• 24 May – Barry Rose, choir director and organist
• 26 May
• *Jeffrey Alan Gray, psychologist
• *Mike Rawson, track and field athlete
• 29 May – Nanette Newman, actress
• 12 June 12 – John Townend, politician
• 19 June – Terence Clark, soldier and diplomat, British Ambassador to Iraq
• 20 June
• *Brian Barder, diplomat
• *Keith Hopkins, historian and sociologist
• 21 June
• * Maggie Jones, actress
• * Ken Matthews, race walker
• 23 June – Keith Sutton, bishop
• 24 June
• *Rodney Peppé, author and illustrator
• *Peter Stoddart, English cricketer
• 26 June – Jeremy Wolfenden, journalist and spy
• 30 June – Richard Jolly, development economist
• 1 July
• *Paddy Jones, salsa dancer
• *Jean Marsh, actress
• *Ian Robinson, publisher
• 4 July – James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn, British nobleman, peer and politician
• 5 July – Philip Madoc, actor
• 8 July – Marty Feldman, writer, comedian and actor
• 9 July – John Clegg, Indian-born English actor
• 11 July – Helen Cresswell, writer
• 14 July – John Tyndall, politician
• 15 July – Harrison Birtwistle, composer
• 21 July – Jonathan Miller, theatre director
• 23 July – Tony Lee, jazz pianist
• 6 August – Chris Bonington, mountaineer
• 8 August – Keith Barron, actor
• 16 August – Diana Wynne Jones, writer
• 18 August – Michael de Larrabeiti, writer
• 19 August – Ronald Jones, track and field athlete
• 20 August – Tom Mangold, journalist and author
• 2 September – Allen Carr, writer and anti-smoking campaigner
• 4 September – Clive Granger, economist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 8 September – Peter Maxwell Davies, composer
• 19 September – Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles
• 20 September – David Marquand, academic and politician
• 21 September – David J. Thouless, Scottish-born condensed-matter physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 24 September
• * Tommy Anderson, Scottish footballer
• * Robert Lang, English stage, television actor
• 26 September – Dick Heckstall-Smith, jazz saxophonist
• 30 September
• * Alan A'Court, English footballer
• * Anna Kashfi, Welsh actress
• 20 October – Timothy West, actor
• 24 October – Wally Herbert, explorer
• 27 October – David and Frederick Barclay, businessmen
• 14 November – Dave Mackay, Scottish footballer
• 28 November – Ted Walker, poet, travel writer and broadcaster
• 9 December – Judi Dench, actress
• 17 December – Ray Wilson, footballer
• 27 December – Pat Moss, racing driver
• 28 December
• *Alasdair Gray, Scottish fiction writer and artist
• *Maggie Smith, actress

  Deaths

• 6 January – Herbert Chapman, football manager
• 23 January – Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway, politician and jurist
• 23 February – Sir Edward Elgar, composer
• 10 March – Thomas Anstey Guthrie, comic novelist 'F. Anstey'
• 25 March – Edmund Selous, ornithologist and writer
• 11 April – John Collier, writer and Pre-Raphaelite painter
• 25 May – Gustav Holst, composer
• 10 June – Frederick Delius, composer
• 10 September – Sie George Henschel, musician
• 27 September – Ellen Willmott, horticulturalist
• 3 November – Sir Robert McAlpine, builder
• 16 November – Alice Hargreaves, née Alice Liddell, inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• 25 November – N. E. Brown, English plant taxonomist