1906 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Edward VII
• Prime Minister – Henry Campbell-Bannerman
• Parliament
• * 27th
• * 28th

  Events

• 8 February – the Liberal Party led by Henry Campbell-Bannerman win the general election with a large majority.
• 10 February –, the first all-big-gun battleship, is launched at Portsmouth and sparks the naval race between Britain and Germany.
• 15 February – representatives of the Labour Representation Committee in Parliament take the name Parliamentary Labour Party.
• 10 March – Bakerloo line of the London Underground opened.
• 15 March – Rolls-Royce Limited is registered as a car manufacturer.
• 22 March – first international rugby match. England defeats France 25–8.
• 21 April – Manchester United F.C., known as Newton Heath until four years ago, secure promotion to the Football League First Division.
• 15 May – Our Dumb Friends League opens its first animal hospital, in Victoria, London.
• 26 May – opening of Vauxhall Bridge in London.
• 30 May – Royal Navy battleship HMS Montagu runs aground on the island of Lundy and becomes a loss.
• 22 June – the present King's daughter Maud is crowned as queen consort of Norway.
• 27 June – Swansea earthquake causes considerable damage.
• 30 June – Salisbury rail crash: a London and South Western Railway express train suffers derailment and collision passing through Salisbury station at excessive speed; 24 passengers and 4 railwaymen are killed.
• 12 July – The worst accident involving a London bus occurs; 10 people are killed when a Vanguard Milnes-Daimler bus crashes on Handcross Hill whilst on a private hire excursion to Brighton.
• 31 August–3 September – Heat wave reaches its peak.
• 19 September – Grantham rail accident: a Great Northern Railway sleeping car train suffers derailment passing through Grantham station at excessive speed; 14 are killed.
• 30 September – the first Gordon Bennett Cup in ballooning is held, starting in Paris; the winners, in the balloon United States, land in Fylingdales, Yorkshire.
• October – new City Hall, Cardiff, opens in Cathays Park.
• 8 October – German inventor and hairdresser Karl Nessler gives the first public demonstration of his permanent wave machine in London.
• 23 October – suffragettes disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.
• 2 December – HMS Dreadnought commissioned.
• 10 December – J. J. Thomson wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."
• 13 December
• * Trade Disputes Act legalises picketing.
• * Workmen's Compensation Act entitles workers to compensation for industrial injuries or disease.
• 15 December – Piccadilly line of the London Underground opened.
• 21 December – Education Act allows local education authorities to provide free school meals to the poorest children.

  Undated

• Hampstead Garden Suburb established in north London.
• Richard Oldham argues that the Earth has a molten interior.
• Anti-vivisection Brown Dog statue is erected in Battersea, provoking riots.
• Alice Perry becomes the first woman to graduate with a degree in civil engineering in the British Isles, at Queen's College, Galway, Ireland, and is appointed in December as an acting county surveyor.
• J. K. Farnell of London manufacture the first British teddy bear.

  Publications

• Angela Brazil's schoolgirl story The Fortunes of Philippa.
• William De Morgan's novel Joseph Vance.
• The English Hymnal edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
• Henry Watson Fowler and Frank Fowler's book The King's English.
• John Galsworthy's first Forsyte Saga novel The Man of Property.
• Rudyard Kipling's historical fantasy Puck of Pook's Hill.
• William Le Queux and H. W. Wilson's invasion literature novel The Invasion of 1910.
• E. Nesbit's novel The Railway Children.
• J. M. Dent and Company commence publication of the Everyman's Library series with Boswell's Life of Johnson.

  Births

• 12 January – Eric Birley, historian and archaeologist
• 16 January – Diana Wynyard, actress
• 22 January – Joe Gladwin, actor
• 23 January – Lady May Abel Smith, royalty, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria
• 10 February – Arthur Elton, pioneer documentary film maker
• 13 February – E. M. Wright, mathematician
• 19 February – Grace Williams, Welsh composer
• 26 February – Madeleine Carroll, actress
• 28 February – Percy Shakespeare, painter
• 3 March – Rose Hacker, activist
• 16 March – Henny Youngman, American-domiciled comedian
• 19 March – Stella Ross-Craig, floral illustrator
• 25 March – A. J. P. Taylor, historian
• 26 March – Ronald Urquhart, general
• 9 April – Hugh Gaitskell, Labour politician
• 11 April – Julia Clements, flower arranger
• 21 April
• * Lillian Browse, art dealer
• * Stephen Tennant, eccentric socialite
• 29 May – T. H. White, Indian-born novelist
• 1 June – Walter Legge, classical record producer
• 19 June – Ernst Boris Chain, German-born biochemist, Nobel laureate
• 20 June – Robert Trent Jones, American-domiciled golf course designer
• 27 June
• * Catherine Cookson, novelist
• * Vernon Watkins, Welsh poet
• 30 June – Ralph Allen, footballer
• 1 July
• * Ritchie Calder, Scottish socialist author, journalist and academic
• * Ivan Neill, major and Irish Unionist politician
• 3 July – George Sanders, screen actor
• 5 August – Joan Hickson, actress
• 28 August – John Betjeman, poet laureate
• 30 August – Elizabeth Longford, biographer
• 1 September – Eleanor Hibbert, historical romantic novelist under several pseudonyms
• 27 September – William Empson, poet and literary critic
• 30 September – J. I. M. Stewart, Scottish-born novelist and academic critic
• 1 November – Beryl Cooke, actress
• 4 November – Arnold Cooke, composer
• 5 November – "Pip" Roberts, general
• 13 November
• * Hermione Baddeley, character actress
• * John Sparrow, literary scholar
• 18 November – Alec Issigonis, Ottoman-born car designer
• 19 November – Alan Bloom, horticulturalist
• 21 November – Georgina Battiscombe, biographer
• 8 December – Richard Llewellyn, novelist
• 24 December – James Hadley Chase, novelist
• 30 December – Carol Reed, film director

  Deaths

• 5 January – Sir William Gatacre, general
• 22 January – George Holyoake, secularist and proponent of the cooperative movement
• 1 February – J. P. Seddon, architect and designer
• 2 March – Ellen Mary Clerke, writer
• 8 March – Henry Baker Tristram, ornithologist and clergyman
• 19 April – Spencer Gore, tennis player and cricketer
• 5 May – Eliza Brightwen, naturalist
• 6 June – Sir Frederick Peel, politician
• 20 June – John Clayton Adams, landscape painter
• 19 August – Agnes Catherine Maitland, academic, novelist and cookery writer
• 24 September – Charlotte Riddell, fiction writer and editor
• 9 October – Wilhelmina FitzClarence, Countess of Munster, fiction writer
• 30 October – Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook, politician
• 9 November – Dorothea Beale, proponent of women's education
• 30 November – Sir Edward Reed, naval architect, politician and Florida railroad magnate
• 19 December – Frederic William Maitland, historian and jurist
• 30 December
• * Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, philanthropist
• * Josephine Butler, feminist and social reformer
• * Eugène Goossens, père, conductor