1940 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister
• * Neville Chamberlain
• * Winston Churchill
• Parliament – 37th

  Events

• 1 January – World War II: Britain calls up 2,000,000 19- to 27-year-olds for military service.
• 3 January – Unity Mitford, daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler, having attempted suicide, returns to England from Germany ; she is carried down the gangplank of the cross-channel ferry at Folkestone on a stretcher.
• 5 January – Oliver Stanley replaces Leslie Hore-Belisha as Secretary of State for War.
• 7 January – The BBC Forces Programme begins broadcasting; it becomes the most popular channel among civilians at home as well as its primary target audience.
• 8 January – Food rationing introduced.
• 9 January – World War II: liner Dunbar Castle of the Union Castle Line hits a mine in the English Channel and sinks with the loss of 9 men.
• 17 January – A wave of freezing weather afflicting most of Europe leads to the River Thames freezing for the first time since 1888.
• 18 January – Explosion at Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills.
• 26-30 January – Severe ice storm across the UK.
• 3 February – A Heinkel He 111 bomber is the first German plane shot down over England.
• 16 February – Altmark Incident: Royal Navy destroyer pursues German tanker Altmark into the neutral waters of Jøssingfjord in southwestern Norway and frees the 290 British seamen held aboard.
• 26 January – British battleship is torpedoed by a U-boat but suffers only minor damage.
• March – Frisch–Peierls memorandum: Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, at this time working at the University of Birmingham, calculate that an atomic bomb could be produced using very much less enriched uranium than has previously been supposed, making it a practical proposition.
• 3-9 March – makes her maiden voyage on delivery from Clydebank to New York.
• 11 March – Rationing of meat introduced.
• 13 March – Indian nationalist Udham Singh assassinates Sir Michael O'Dwyer at Caxton Hall in London, for which he is hanged on 31 July at HM Prison Pentonville.
• 16 March – First civilian casualty of bombing in the UK, on Orkney.
• 29 March – Metal security threads added to £1 notes to prevent forgeries.
• 31 March – 33 fascist sympathisers, including Oswald Mosley, are interned.
• 1 April – British Overseas Airways Corporation begins operation as a single company.
• 5 April – Neville Chamberlain declares in a public speech that Hitler has "missed the bus".
• 9 April – British campaign in Norway commences following Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway.
• 12-13 April – British occupation of the Faroe Islands, following the German invasion of Denmark, to avert a possible German occupation of the islands.
• 23 April – The War Budget sees the introduction of Purchase Tax and an increase in tobacco duties.
• 2 May – Last British and French troops evacuated from Norway following failure in the Norwegian Campaign.
• 7-9 May – Norway Debate in the House of Commons. Strong opposition to the Chamberlain ministry's conduct of the war make it impossible for him to continue as Prime Minister.
• 9 May
• * In private discussions, Viscount Halifax rules himself out as successor to Chamberlain in favour of Winston Churchill.
• * Guy Lloyd wins the East Renfrewshire by-election for the Unionist Party.
• 10 May
• * Neville Chamberlain resigns as Prime Minister, and is replaced by Winston Churchill with a coalition war ministry.
• * British Invasion of Iceland, following the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, to avert a possible German occupation of the island, in violation of Iceland's neutrality.
• 13 May – Winston Churchill makes his famous "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.
• 13-14 May – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government are evacuated to London using HMS Hereward following the German invasion of the Low Countries.
• 14 May – Recruitment begins for a home defence force – the Local Defence Volunteers, renamed as the Home Guard from 23 July.
• 16 May – Large-scale alien internment begins.
• 22 May – Parliament passes the Emergency Powers Act 1940 giving the government full control over all persons and property.
• 23 May – Parliament passes the Treachery Act 1940 to facilitate the prosecution and execution of enemy spies.
• 24 May – Anglo-French Supreme War Council decides to withdraw all forces under its control from Norway.
• 26 May-4 June – The Dunkirk evacuation of British Expeditionary Force takes place. 300,000 troops are evacuated from France to England.

• 28 May – May 1940 War Cabinet Crisis: Churchill wins the War Cabinet round to his view that there should be no peace negotiations with Hitler, contrary to the view of his Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax.
• 2 June – Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden gives a radio address claiming success of the Dunkirk evacuation.
• 4 June – Churchill makes his We shall fight on the beaches speech to the House of Commons.
• 5 June – Novelist J. B. Priestley broadcasts his first Sunday evening radio Postscript, "An excursion to hell", on the BBC Home Service, marking the role of the pleasure steamers in the Dunkirk evacuation.
• 7 June – King Haakon VII of Norway and his government are evacuated to London on HMS Devonshire.
• 9 June – The Commandos are created.
• 10 June – Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
• 11 June – The Western Desert Campaign opens with British forces crossing the Frontier Wire into Italian Libya.
• 12 June – Over 10,000 soldiers of the 51st Division under General Victor Fortune surrender to Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.
• 16 June – The Churchill war ministry offers a Franco-British Union to Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister of France, in the hope of preventing France from agreeing to an armistice with Nazi Germany, but Reynaud resigns when his own cabinet refuses to accept it..
• 17 June –, serving as a troopship, is bombed and sunk by the Luftwaffe while evacuating British troops and nationals from Saint-Nazaire with the loss of at least 4,000 lives, the largest single UK loss in any World War II event, immediate news of which is suppressed in the British press. Destroyer rescues around 600.
• 18 June
• * Churchill makes his Battle of Britain speech to the House of Commons: "...the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin... if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." He repeats the speech on BBC radio this evening.
• * Appeal of 18 June: General Charles de Gaulle, de facto leader of the Free French Forces, makes his first broadcast appeal over Radio Londres from London, rallying French Resistance.
• 23 June – BBC Forces Programme begins broadcasting Music While You Work.
• 24 June–1 July – Operation Fish: Royal Navy cruiser sails from Greenock in convoy to Halifax, Nova Scotia, carrying a large part of the gold reserves of the United Kingdom and securities for safe keeping in Canada. Another convoy sets sail on 5 July from the Clyde, including HMS Batory, carrying cargo worth $1.7 billion, the largest movement of wealth in history.
• 30 June – German forces land in Guernsey, start of the 5-year Occupation of the Channel Islands.
• June – The Ministry of Information issues more than 14 million copies of an advisory leaflet If the Invader Comes.
• 1 July – First Luftwaffe daylight bombing raid on mainland Britain at Wick, Caithness: 15 civilians, 8 of them children, are killed.
• 2 July – British-owned, carrying civilian internees and POWs of Italian and German origin from Liverpool to Canada, is torpedoed and sunk by off northwest Ireland with the loss of around 865 lives.

• 3 July
• * Operation Catapult aims to take French navy ships into British control or destroy them to prevent them falling into German hands. Those in port at Plymouth and Portsmouth are boarded and in an attack on Mers-el-Kébir British naval units sink or seize ships of the French fleet anchored in the Algerian ports of Mers El Kébir and Oran. The following day, Vichy France breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain.
• * Cardiff bombed for the first time.
• 9 July – Battle of Britain begins.
• 19 July – Adolf Hitler makes a peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag. BBC German-language broadcaster Sefton Delmer unofficially rejects it at once and Lord Halifax, British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on 22 July.
• 22 July – Special Operations Executive formed to undertake espionage and sabotage in enemy-occupied countries.
• End July – General Sir Alan Brooke is appointed Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, in succession to General Ironside.
• 9 August – Birmingham Blitz : Heavy bombing of Birmingham begins.
• 18 August
• * "The Hardest Day" in the Battle of Britain: both sides lose more aircraft combined on this day than at any other point during the campaign without the Luftwaffe achieving dominance over RAF Fighter Command.
• * The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, installed as Governor of the Bahamas.
• 20 August – Churchill pays tribute in Parliament to the Royal Air Force fighter crews: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
• 24 August
• * First aid raid on London takes place.
• * Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain, Arthur Duncan Gardner, Norman Heatley, M. Jennings, J. Orr-Ewing and G. Sanders at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.
• 26 August – RAF bombing of Berlin begins.

• 7 September
• * The Blitz begins. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing on London.
• * British high command issues the code "Cromwell" to troops, alerting them to possible German invasion.
• 15 September – RAF command claims victory over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain; this day is thereafter known as "Battle of Britain Day".
• 17 September – Hitler postpones Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of Britain, indefinitely.
• 17–18 September – is torpedoed by in the Atlantic with the loss of 248 of the 406 on board, including child evacuees bound for Canada. The sinking results in cancellation of the Children's Overseas Reception Board's plan to relocate British children abroad.
• 23 September – King George VI announces the creation of the George Cross decoration during a radio broadcast.
• 27 September – the Battle of Graveney Marsh in Kent, the last exchange of shots with a foreign force on mainland British soil, takes place when soldiers of the London Irish Rifles capture the crew of a downed new German Junkers Ju 88 bomber who initially resist arrest with gunfire; one of the enemy is shot in the foot.
• 9 October – Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Leader of the Conservative Party.
• 14 October – At least 64 people are killed when a German bomb penetrates Balham station on the London Underground which is in use as an air-raid shelter.
• 25 October – Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal is appointed to succeed Sir Cyril Newall as Chief of the Air Staff, a post he will hold for the remainder of the War.
• 31 October – The Battle of Britain ends.
• 5 November – Allied Convoy HX 84 is attacked by German cruiser Admiral Scheer in the North Atlantic; the sacrifice of escorting British armed merchant cruiser under Capt. Edward Fegen and enables a majority of the ships to escape.
• 6 November – Fourteen children are killed when a German bomb hits the Civic Centre in Southampton.
• 9 November – Major fire at Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
• 11 November – Battle of Taranto: the Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
• 14–15 November – Coventry Blitz: the centre of Coventry is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers: 150,000 incendiary devices, 503 tons of high explosives and 130 parachute mines level 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings. At least 568 people are killed, while 863 more are injured. Exceptionally, the location and nature of the damage here is immediately publicised in the media.
• 19 November – Less than a week after the blitz of Coventry, further heavy air raids take place in central England. Birmingham, West Bromwich, Dudley and Tipton are all bombed. Some 900 people are killed and 2,000 more injured – there are 53 deaths at the Birmingham Small Arms Company factory in Small Heath alone. Most of the region's casualties are in Birmingham.
• 23 November – Southampton Blitz: Southampton is bombed.
• 24 November – Bristol Blitz: beginning of the bombing of Bristol.
• 27 November–1 December – Oil storage depot fire at Turnchapel, Plymouth, caused by bombing.
• 12–15 December – Sheffield Blitz : the city of Sheffield is heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe. 660 people are killed, while another 1,500 are injured and 30,000 more left homeless.
• 14 December – Release of the Ealing Studios war comedy Sailors Three, starring Tommy Trinder, Claude Hulbert and Michael Wilding; the song "All Over The Place", sung by Trinder in the film, becomes one of the most popular of the war.
• 20 December – An anti-aircraft shell fired from Dudley accidentally strikes a public house in neighbouring Tipton, resulting in dozens of casualties.
• 20–21 December – Liverpool Blitz: Liverpool is heavily bombed, with well over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured.
• 22 December – Manchester Blitz: Manchester is heavily bombed as the Luftwaffe air raids on Britain continue. 363 are killed and 1,183 wounded; and Manchester Cathedral is badly damaged.
• 29 December – Heavy bombing in London causes the Second Great Fire of London. Guildhall is among many buildings badly damaged or destroyed. There are hundreds more casualties.

  Undated

• Following the outbreak of World War II, housebuilding is halted, but some 1.1 million council houses have been built in the last 20 years to replace slum property, although the need for further demolition and rehousing remains, including the issue of rehousing families left homeless by air raids.

  Publications

• Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard’s political tract Guilty Men.
• Joyce Carey's novel Charley is My Darling.
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels Sad Cypress and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.
• T. S. Eliot's poem East Coker, second of the Four Quartets.
• Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory.
• Michael Sadleir's novel Fanny by Gaslight.
• Thomas Sharp's Pelican book Town Planning.
• C. P. Snow's novel George Passant.
• C. Henry Warren's account England is a Village illustrated by Denys Watkins-Pitchford.
• Literary magazine Horizon.

  Births

• 4 January
• *Alexander Chancellor, English journalist
• *Professor Brian Josephson, scientist
• 14 January – Trevor Nunn, stage and film director
• 19 January – Mike Reid, comedian, actor and author
• 22 January – John Hurt, actor
• 23 January
• * Brian Labone, footballer
• * Ted Rowlands, politician
• 31 January – Pat Kavanagh, South African-born literary agent
• 2 February – David Jason, television actor
• 6 February – Jimmy Tarbuck, comedian
• 20 February – Jimmy Greaves, footballer and television pundit
• 24 February
• * Denis Law, Scottish footballer
• * John Lyall, football player and manager
• 1 March – David Broome, showjumping champion
• 15 March – Frank Dobson, politician
• 1 April – Annie Nightingale, radio music presenter
• 2 April
• * Mike Hailwood, motorcycle racer
• * Peter Haining, author
• * Penelope Keith, actress
• 10 April – Gloria Hunniford, broadcast presenter
• 14 April – Angela Lambert, journalist and writer
• 15 April – Jeffrey Archer, politician, novelist and perjurer
• 16 April – Margaret Maden, academic
• 17 April – Billy Fury, singer songwriter
• 1 May – John Wheeler, politician
• 6 May – Alexandra Burslem, academic
• 7 May – Angela Carter, novelist and journalist
• 8 May – James Blyth, Baron Blyth of Rowington, English businessman and academic
• 9 May – Alan Ryan, English philosopher and academic
• 12 May – Dominic Cadbury, English businessman and academic
• 13 May – Bruce Chatwin, novelist and travel writer
• 14 May – Chay Blyth, Scottish yachtsman and adventurer
• 16 May – Gareth Roberts, physicist
• 23 May – Giles Gordon, Scottish author and agent
• 7 June
• * Tom Jones, Welsh singer
• * Ronald Pickup, actor
• 8 June – Carole Ann Ford, actress
• 20 June – John Mahoney, actor
• 23 June
• * Adam Faith, born Terry Nelhams, pop singer, screen actor and financial journalist
• * Derry Irvine, Scottish-born Lord Chancellor of England
• 25 June – A. J. Quinnell, writer
• 29 June – John Dawes, rugby player
• 4 July – Dave Rowberry, pianist and songwriter
• 7 July – Ringo Starr, born Richard Starkey, rock drummer
• 11 July – Tommy Vance, radio broadcaster
• 13 July – Patrick Stewart, actor
• 17 July – Tim Brooke-Taylor, broadcast comedy performer
• 19 September – Zandra Rhodes, fashion designer
• 9 October – John Lennon, rock singer-songwriter
• 14 October
• * Cliff Richard, born Harry Webb, pop singer and film actor
• * Christopher Timothy, Welsh actor, television director and writer
• 17 October
• * Jim Smith, footballer and manager
• * Peter Stringfellow, nightclub owner
• 19 October – Michael Gambon, actor
• 31 October – Eric Griffiths, guitarist
• 4 November – Daniel Sperber, Welsh-born Israeli author, university professor and scholar
• 10 December – Anne Gibson, Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen, English union leader and author
• 22 December – Noel Jones, British Ambassador to Kazakhstan

  Deaths

• 11 February – John Buchan, Scottish novelist, Unionist politician and Governor General of Canada
• 24 March – Thomas Adams, urban planner
• 18 April – H. A. L. Fisher, historian and Liberal politician
• 2 May – Ernest Joyce, Antarctic explorer
• 7 May – George Lansbury, politician and social reformer; leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935
• 17 June – Arthur Harden, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 24 June – Alfred Fowler, astronomer
• 16 July – Ray Strachey, feminist campaigner
• 22 August – Oliver Lodge, physicist
• 30 August – J. J. Thomson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 26 September – W. H. Davies, Welsh poet and author
• 9 October – Sir Wilfred Grenfell, medical missionary to Newfoundland and Labrador
• 30 October – Hilda Matheson, pioneering radio talks producer
• 2 November – Squadron Leader Archie McKellar, fighter ace
• 9 November – Neville Chamberlain, former Prime Minister
• 16 December – William Wallace, Scottish composer