1929 in the United Kingdom

1929 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931

Sport

1929 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

Events from the year 1929 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - King George V
• Prime Minister - Stanley Baldwin, Conservative (until 5 June), Ramsay MacDonald, Labour

Events

• 30 March - Imperial Airways begins operating the first commercial flights between London and Karachi.^[1]
• 22 April - Chat Moss airport opens in Manchester, Britain's first municipal airport.^[2]
• 14 May - Wilfred Rhodes takes his 4000th first-class wicket during a performance of 9 for 39 at Leyton.
• 14 May - The North East Coast Exhibition exhibition opens, and will run for 6 months^[3]
• 31 May - The General election returns a hung parliament. Liberals will determine who has power. Among the Conservative casualties is Harold Macmillan, the 35-year-old MP for Stockton-on-Tees, who first entered parliament five years ago.^[4]
• 7 June - The Conservatives concede power rather than risk courting Liberals for fragile majority.
• 8 June - Ramsay MacDonald founds new Labour government.^[2]
• 17 June - Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail shown for the first time in London, the first British sound film.^[1]
• 1 July - C. P. Scott retires after 57½ years as editor of The Manchester Guardian and is succeeded by his son, Ted.
• 5 July - Scotland Yard seizes 13 nude paintings by D. H. Lawrence from a Mayfair gallery on grounds of indecency.^[5]
• 11 July - Gillingham Fair fire disaster kills 15 as a firefighting demonstration goes catastrophically wrong.
• 20 August - First transmissions of John Logie Baird's experimental 30-line television system by the BBC.^[6]
• 2 October - The Union between the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland takes place.
• 28 October - Sharp fall on the London Stock Exchange, following a similar crash on Wall Street on 24 October.^[2]
• 1 November - The Pony Club established.^[1]
• 10 November - Première of John Grierson's documentary film Drifters about North Sea herring fishermen, made for the Empire Marketing Board, effectively inaugurating the British Documentary Film Movement. (It debuts at the private Film Society in London on a double-bill with the UK première of Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin.)^[7]
• 1 December - Underground Electric Railways Company of London officially opens its new headquarters building at 55 Broadway designed by Charles Holden and incorporating sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Henry Moore.^[8]
• 10 December
  • Arthur Harden wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Hans von Euler-Chelpin "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes".^[9]
  • Frederick Hopkins wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery of the growth-stimulating vitamins".^[10]
• 31 December - Glen Cinema Disaster in Paisley, Scotland: 69 children die trying to escape smoke.^[11]

Undated

• First Tesco store opens, at Burnt Oak, Edgware, Middlesex.^[12]
• The Christian Marxist Hewlett Johnson is appointed Dean of Canterbury.
• Coypu introduced to East Anglia for their fur.
• Ross County F.C. founded in Dingwall, Scotland. They initially play in the Highland League.

Publications

• Agatha Christie's novel The Seven Dials Mystery.
• Robert Graves' memoir Good-Bye to All That.
• Richard Hughes' novel A High Wind in Jamaica.
• Charles Kay Ogden's book Basic English.
• J. B. Priestley's novel The Good Companions.^[13]
• Alison Uttley's children's book The Squirrel, The Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit, introducing Little Grey Rabbit.
• Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own.

Births

• 28 January - Acker Bilk, jazz clarinetist and band leader
• 31 January - Jean Simmons, actress (died 2010)
• 6 February - Keith Waterhouse, novelist and journalist (died 2009)
• 15 February - Graham Hill, race car driver (died 1975)
• 17 February - Patricia Routledge, actress
• 18 February - Len Deighton, author
• 21 February - James Beck, actor (died 1973)
• 23 March - Sir Roger Bannister, runner
• 5 April - Nigel Hawthorne, actor (died 2001)
• 18 April - Peter Jeffrey, actor (died 1999)
• 22 April - Michael Atiyah, mathematician
• 4 May - Audrey Hepburn, actress (died 1993)
• 14 May - Henry McGee, actor (died 2006)
• 12 June - Brigid Brophy, author (died 1995)
• 13 June - Alan Civil, horn player (died 1989)
• 5 July - Tony Lock, cricketer (died 1995)
• 24 July - Peter Yates, film director
• 31 July - Lynne Reid Banks, author
• 8 August - Ronald Biggs, criminal
• 25 August - Clifford Forsythe, politician (died 2000)
• 29 August - Thom Gunn, poet (died 2004)
• 15 September - John Julius Norwich, historian
• 21 September - Bernard Williams, philosopher (died 2003)
• 25 September - Ronnie Barker, comedian (died 2005)
• 7 October - Robert Westall, author (died 1993)
• 28 October - Joan Plowright, actress
• 11 December - Kenneth MacMillan, ballet dancer and choreographer (died 1992)
• 12 December - John Osborne, playwright and film producer (died 1994)
• 16 December - Nicholas Courtney, actor (died 2011)
• 16 December - James Moore, author
• 17 December - Jacqueline Hill, actress (died 1993)
• 28 December - Brian Redhead, journalist and broadcaster (died 1994)
• undated - Kenneth Grange, industrial designer

Deaths

• 12 February - Lillie Langtry, British singer and actress (born 1853)
• 21 May - Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1847)
• 16 June - Bramwell Booth, General of The Salvation Army (born 1856)
• 28 June - Edward Carpenter, English poet (born 1844)
• 5 August - Millicent Fawcett, British suffragist and feminist (born 1847)
• 26 August - Sir Ernest Satow, British diplomat and scholar (born 1843)

References

See also