1957 in the United Kingdom

1957 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1955 | 1956 | 1957 (1957) | 1958 | 1959

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport, Television and music

1957 British Grand Prix 1957 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland 1957 in British television 1957 in British music

Events from the year 1957 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Prime Minister – Anthony Eden (Conservative) (until 10 January), Harold Macmillan (Conservative) (starting 10 January)

Events

• 1 January – Sexual Offences Act 1956 (a consolidation of the English criminal law) comes into effect.
• 9 January – Resignation of Anthony Eden as Prime Minister due to ill-health.
• 10 January – Harold Macmillan succeeds Eden as Prime Minister.
• 16 January
  • Royal Ballet granted a Royal Charter.
  • The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool as a jazz club.
• January – National Trust for Scotland agrees to accept the bequest of the islands of St Kilda.
• February – Norwich City Council becomes the first British local authority to install a computer (an Elliott 405).
• 11 February – East Midlands earthquake.
• 16 February – The "Toddlers' Truce" (an arrangement whereby there were no television broadcasts between 6 PM and 7 PM to allow parents to put their children to bed) is abolished.
• 6 March – Ghana becomes independent of the United Kingdom.
• 21 March – Homicide Act amends the common law offence of murder in English law by introducing the partial defences of diminished responsibility and suicide pact, reforming the partial defence of provocation, and largely abolishing the doctrine of constructive malice; it also restricts the application of the death penalty to aggravated murder, allowing commutation of sentence to life imprisonment in other cases.
• 1 April – The BBC's Panorama current affairs television programme presented by Richard Dimbleby broadcasts a spaghetti tree hoax report purporting to show spaghetti being harvested in Switzerland, believed to be the first April Fool's Day joke on television.
• 10 April – Royal Court Theatre (London) premieres John Osborne’s The Entertainer with Laurence Olivier in the title role.
• 11 April – The British Government agrees to allow Singapore its independence.
• 15 April – Suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams is controversially found not guilty at the Old Bailey after Britain's longest murder trial. Political interference is suspected.
• 20 April – Manchester United retain the Football League First Division title with a 4-0 win over Sunderland.
• 24 April – First broadcast of BBC Television astronomy series The Sky at Night presented by Patrick Moore. This will run with the same presenter until his death in December 2012.
• 2 May – Hammer Film Productions' The Curse of Frankenstein released.
• 4 May – Aston Villa win the FA Cup for a record seventh time with a 2-1 win over Football League First Division champions Manchester United at Wembley Stadium. Peter McParland scores both of Villa's goals, with United's consolation goal coming from Tommy Taylor. The result ends Manchester United's hopes of becoming the first team this century to win the double of the league title and FA Cup.
• 14 May – End of petrol rationing following the Suez Crisis.
• 15 May
  • Operation Grapple: Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb, at Malden Island in the Pacific.
  • Stanley Matthews plays his final international soccer game, ending an English record international career of almost 23 years.
• 1 June – The first Premium Bond winners selected by the computer ERNIE.
• 3 June – Actor and playwright Noël Coward returns to Britain from the West Indies amid criticism that he is living abroad to avoid having to pay tax.
• 27 June – A report by the Medical Research Council reveals that there is evidence to support a link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.
• 6 July – Future members of The Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney first meet as teenagers at a garden fete at St. Peter's Church, Woolton, Liverpool, at which Lennon's skiffle group, The Quarrymen, is playing.
• 20 July
  • Prime minister Harold Macmillan makes an optimistic speech to his fellow Conservative party members at Bedford, telling them that "most of our people have never had it so good".
  • Stirling Moss finishes the British Grand Prix at Aintree in first position in a Vanwall VW5, the first World Championship victory for a British car.
• 20–28 July – The Transport and General Workers' Union stages a national strike by provincial (non-municipal) bus crews; some violence against non-strikers is reported.
• 31 July – The Tryweryn Bill, permitting Liverpool City Council to build a reservoir which will drown the village of Capel Celyn, becomes law. Every Welsh MP votes against, with the exception of one who abstains.
• 5 August – The cartoon character Andy Capp first appears in northern editions of the Daily Mirror.
• 31 August
  • The Federation of Malaya becomes independent from Britain.
  • Central Scotland's independent channel Scottish Television goes on air, the first 7-day-a-week ITV franchise to do so.
• August – ZETA fusion reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire.
• 4 September – Publication of the Wolfenden report recommending "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence".
• 10 September – Tony Lock becomes the last bowler to reach 200 wickets in a first-class season, a feat subsequently impossible due to limited-overs cricket and covered pitches.
• October – The Consumers' Association begins publishing Which? magazine.
• 1 October – Britain introduces a vaccine against Asian Flu, which has already killed thousands of people worldwide.
• 2 October – David Lean's Academy Award-winning film The Bridge on the River Kwai is released.
• 10 October – Windscale fire: The graphite core of the nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, catches fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area.
• 11 October – Jodrell Bank Observatory becomes operational.
• 30 October – The government unveils plans which will allow women to join the House of Lords for the first time.
• 8 November – An inquiry into last month's fire at Windscale nuclear power plant blames the accident on a combination of human error, poor management and faulty instruments.
• 15 November – 1957 Aquila Airways Solent crash: A flying boat crash on the Isle of Wight kills 45.
• 4 December – The Lewisham rail crash kills ninety and injures 173.
• 10 December – Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes".
• 12 December – Wales gets its own minister of state in the Westminster government for the first time.
• 25 December – The Royal Christmas Message is broadcast on television with the Queen on camera for the first time.
• 28 December – A case of foot-and-mouth disease is found at an abattoir in Liverpool.

Publications

• John Braine's novel Room at the Top.
• B²FH, an astrophysics paper by British astronomers Geoffrey Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge and Fred Hoyle and American astronomer William Fowler describing the synthesis of the lightest elements through nuclear processes in stars.
• Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel 4.50 From Paddington.
• Lawrence Durrell's novel Justine, first of The Alexandria Quartet, and his memoir Bitter Lemons.
• Ian Fleming's James Bond novel From Russia with Love.
• Richard Hoggart's study The Uses of Literacy.
• Ted Hughes' first collection of poems The Hawk in the Rain.
• Alistair MacLean's wartime adventure novel The Guns of Navarone.
• Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving but Drowning".
• Evelyn Waugh's novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.
• Bert Weedon's guitar tutorial Play in a Day.
• John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos.

Births

• 6 January – Michael Foale, astronaut
• 15 January – Patrick Dixon, business guru and author
• 22 January – Francis Wheen, English journalist and author
• 24 January – Adrian Edmondson, comedian
• 9 February – Gordon Strachan, footballer and manager
• 22 February – Robert Bathurst, actor
• 12 March – Steve Harris, bassist (Iron Maiden)
• 17 March – Mal Donaghy, footballer
• 25 March – Christina Boxer, middle distance runner
• 1 April – David Gower, cricket player and commentator
• 3 April – Julia Hills, actress
• 17 April – Nick Hornby, novelist
• 29 April – Daniel Day-Lewis, actor
• 3 May – Jo Brand, comedian
• 10 May – Sid Vicious, born John Ritchie, bassist (Sex Pistols) (died 1979)
• 27 May – Siouxsie Sioux, born Susan Ballion, singer (Siouxsie and the Banshees)
• 22 June – Danny Baker, broadcaster and music journalist
• 9 July
  • Marc Almond, singer
  • Paul Merton, actor and comedian
• 11 July – Peter Murphy, singer (Bauhaus)
• 17 July – Fern Britton, television presenter
• 17 August – Robin Cousins, figure skater
• 20 August – Simon Donaldson, mathematician
• 22 August – Steve Davis, snooker player
• 24 August – Stephen Fry, comedian, author and actor
• 31 August – Glenn Tilbrook, Squeeze singer songwriter
• 10 September – Mark Naylor, high jumper
• 12 September – Rachel Ward, actress
• 7 October – Jayne Torvill, ice skater
• 11 October – Dawn French, comedian
• 15 October – Michael Caton-Jones, Scottish film director
• 13 November – Stephen Baxter, science fiction author
• 30 November – Colin Mochrie, comedian
• 8 December – Phil Collen, singer and guitarist (Def Leppard)
• 20 December – Billy Bragg, singer
• Unknown – Jacquie de Creed, stunt woman (died 2011)

Deaths

• January – Harry Gordon, popular entertainer (born 1893)
• 9 February – John Axon, railwayman (born 1900)
• 16 February – Leslie Hore-Belisha, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha, statesman after whom Belisha beacons are named (born 1893)
• 7 March – Wyndham Lewis, painter and author (born 1882, Canada)
• 21 March – Charles Kay Ogden, linguist, philosopher and writer (born 1889)
• 23 March – Sir Patrick Abercrombie, town planner (born 1879)
• 21 April – John Graham Kerr, embryologist and politician (born 1869)
• 17 June – Dorothy Richardson, feminist writer (born 1873)
• 27 June – Malcolm Lowry, novelist (born 1909)
• 19 August – David Bomberg, painter (born 1890)
• 20 August – Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, explorer and admiral (born 1880)
• 1 September – Dennis Brain, Horn player (born 1921)
• 14 October – Fred Russell, "The Father of Modern Ventriloquism" (born 1862)
• 4 November – William Haywood, architect (born 1876)
• 9 December – Llewellyn Henry Gwynne, first bishop of Egypt and Sudan (born 1863)
• 13 December – Michael Sadleir, novelist (born 1888)
• 21 December – Eric Coates, composer (born 1886)
• 31 December – Sir Archibald Bodkin, Director of Public Prosecutions (born 1862)