1937 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister
• * Stanley Baldwin
• * Neville Chamberlain
• 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.
• 1–27 May – London's bus drivers and conductors go on strike.
• 12 May – Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth takes place at Westminster Abbey, London. The BBC makes its first outside broadcast covering the event. The newly formed social research organisation Mass Observation makes its first survey of social attitudes on this day.
• 21 May – nearly 4000 Basque 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.
• 3 June – the Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson in the Château de Candé.
• 1 July – the 999 emergency telephone number is introduced.
• 2 July – Holditch Colliery Disaster, a coal mining accident in Chesterton, Staffordshire, in which thirty men die following a fire and explosions.
• 7 July – Peel Commission proposes partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.
• 23 July – Matrimonial Causes Act adds insanity and desertion to infidelity as legitimate grounds for divorce.
• 28 July – assassination attempt on King George VI in Belfast by the Irish Republican Army.
• 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.
• 30 September – last issue of The Morning Post newspaper before it is absorbed by The Daily Telegraph.
• October–December – Croydon typhoid outbreak of 1937: 341 cases of typhoid fever result from a polluted well.
• 6 October – the fictional character 'Mrs. Miniver' first appears in the column on domestic life written by 'Jan Struther' for The Times.
• 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.
• 4 December – the first issue of children's comic The Dandy, including the character Desperate Dan, is published.
• 10 December
• * Nobel Prizes announced:
• ** Lord Robert Cecil wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• ** George Thomson wins the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Clinton Davisson "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals".
• ** Walter Haworth wins half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C".
• * 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.
• 16 December – the musical Me and My Girl opens in the West End Victoria Palace Theatre; the dance number "The Lambeth Walk" becomes popular.
• December – the Hawker Hurricane enters service with the Royal Air Force as its first monoplane fighter aircraft.

  Undated

• Ministers of the Crown Act 1937 for the first time formally recognises the offices of Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Leader of the Opposition and provides them with official salaries.
• Kensal House in Ladbroke Grove, London, two low-rise blocks of modernist flats for the working class designed by Maxwell Fry, is completed as a prototype for modern urban living.
• Littlewoods, the pools company formed fourteen years ago by Liverpool businessman John Moores, expands to create a department store in Blackpool, Lancashire.

  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.
• 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
• 8 January – Shirley Bassey, Welsh-born singer
• 9 January – Michael Nicholson, journalist and author
• 14 January – Ken Higgs, English cricketer
• 27 January – John Ogdon, pianist
• 29 January – Jeff Clyne, jazz bassist
• 30 January – Vanessa Redgrave, actress
• 10 February – Anne Anderson, Scottish physiologist
• 11 February – Ian Gow, Member of Parliament for Eastbourne assassinated by the IRA
• 12 February – Roland Boyes, Labour politician
• 16 February – Peter Hobday, presenter and journalist
• 17 February – Peter Beet, doctor and railway preservationist
• 21 February – Jilly Cooper, novelist
• 25 February – Tom Courtenay, actor
• 9 April
• *Barrington J. Bayley, science fiction author
• *Valerie Singleton, television presenter
• 18 April
• * Jan Kaplický, British architect of Czech origin
• *Teddy Taylor, politician
• 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
• *John Cope, Baron Cope of Berkeley, accountant and politician, Treasurer of the Household
• 19 May – Pat Roach, wrestler and actor
• 26 May – Neil Ardley, composer
• 2 June – Rosalyn Higgins, born Rosalyn C. Cohen, President of the International Court of Justice
• 8 June – Gillian Clarke, Welsh poet and playwright
• 15 June – Alan Thornett, Trotskyist activist
• 16 June – Charmian May, actress
• 21 June – John Edrich, cricketer
• 23 June – Sir Nicholas Shackleton, geologist
• 26 June – Len Worley, English footballer
• 2 July – Dee Palmer, composer, arranger and progressive rock keyboardist
• 3 July
• *Brian Garvey, English footballer
• *Tom Stoppard, Czech-born playwright
• 13 July – Ghillean Prance, botanist and ecologist
• 14 July – Duncan MacKay, Scottish footballer
• 16 July
• *Tommy Bruce, singer
• * Jeremy Spenser, actor
• 17 July – Alan Hopper, English professional footballer
• 18 July – Peter Smith, Scottish footballer
• 21 July – Neville Bannister, footballer
• 27 July – Anna Dawson, actress
• 4 August – Dave Pearson, painter
• 6 August – Barbara Windsor, actress
• 18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer
• 20 August – Jim Bowen, born Peter Williams, stand-up comedian and television host
• 21 August – Donald Dewar, First Minister of Scotland
• 2 September
• * John Cornforth, architectural historian
• * Derek Fowlds, actor
• 13 September – Jessica Mann, crime novelist
• 16 September – Keith Bosley, broadcaster, poet and translator
• 1 October – Matthew Carter, type designer
• 4 October – Jackie Collins, romance novelist
• 7 October – Christopher Booker, journalist
• 9 October – Brian Blessed, actor
• 11 October – Bobby Charlton, English footballer
• 17 October – Paxton Whitehead, English actor
• 24 October – Barry Davies, English journalist and sportscaster
• 16 November – Alan Budd, economist and academic
• 8 November – Paul Foot, British journalist
• 17 November – Peter Cook, comedian and writer
• 27 November – Rodney Bewes, television actor
• 30 November – Ridley Scott, film director
• 7 December – Kenneth Colley, actor
• 10 December – Scott Baker, lawyer and judge
• 21 December – Jimmy Collins, Scottish footballer
• 26 December – John Horton Conway, mathematician
• 29 December – Barbara Steele, actress
• 30 December – Gordon Banks, English goalkeeper
• 31 December – Anthony Hopkins, Welsh-born actor

  Deaths

• 18 January – Isaac Barr, Anglican clergyman, promoter of colonial settlement schemes
• 13 March – Elihu Thomson, engineer and inventor
• 17 March – Austen Chamberlain, statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 25 March – John Drinkwater, poet and dramatist
• 19 April – Martin Conway, art critic, politician and mountaineer
• 19 June – J. M. Barrie, novelist and dramatist
• 22 June – Sir Eric Geddes, transport manager and politician
• 22 August – Albert Goodman, politician
• 9 November – Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 25 November – Lilian Baylis, theatrical producer
• 9 December — Lilias Armstrong, phonetician