1910 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch
• * Edward VII
• * George V
• Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith
• Parliament
• * 28th
• * 29th

  Events

• 15 January – A general election held in response to the House of Lords' rejection of the 1909 budget results in a reduced Liberal Party majority.
• 31 January – Dr. Crippen poisons his wife and buries her body in the cellar.
• 1 February – The first labour exchanges open in the UK.
• 7 February – Dreadnought hoax: Horace de Vere Cole and members of the Bloomsbury Group make an "official visit" to the battleship HMS Dreadnought at Portland Harbour in disguise as a royal delegation from Abyssinia.
• 15 February – The Royal Aero Club is granted its "Royal" prefix.
• 19 February – Old Trafford, the largest football stadium in England with an 80,000 capacity, is opened. Manchester United's first game there is a 4–3 home defeat to Liverpool in the Football League First Division.
• March – King Edward VII falls very ill with bronchitis in Paris, France, returning to London a few weeks later.
• 31 March – Federation of Stoke-on-Trent: Administrative amalgamation of the six towns of The Potteries in north Staffordshire into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent, the first such merger in the history of local government in England.
• April – It is reported that King Edward VII's health has deteriorated further and he is likely to die soon.
• 4 April – A bill to abolish the legislative veto of the House of Lords is introduced in the House of Commons, starting a prolonged clash between the two Houses of Parliament.
• 27 April – The House of Commons passes David Lloyd George's 'People's Budget' for the second time; it is passed by House of Lords on 29 April.
• 28 April – Frenchman Louis Paulhan completes the Daily Mail's 1910 London to Manchester air race in under 24 hours; the other competitor, Claude Grahame-White, is forced to retire.
• 6 May – George V succeeds to the British throne as King on the death of his father, Edward VII.
• 11 May – A firedamp explosion at Wellington Colliery, Whitehaven, in the Cumberland Coalfield, kills 136.
• 20 May – Funeral of Edward VII held, one of the largest and last gatherings of European royalty to take place, following the first public lying in state in Westminster Hall.
• 2 June – Charles Rolls becomes the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane, including the first eastbound flight. He is also the first British resident to make the crossing in a British-built plane.
• 15 June – Terra Nova Expedition: Robert Falcon Scott's ship Terra Nova sets sail from Cardiff on an expedition with the purpose of undertaking scientific research and exploration along the coast and interior of Antarctica.
• 14–23 June – Edinburgh Missionary Conference is held in Scotland, presided over by Nobel Peace Prize recipient John R. Mott, launching the modern ecumenical movement and the modern missions movement.
• 21 June – Truro Cathedral, Cornwall, completed.
• 28 June – Consecration of the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in London.
• 9–10 July – 'Fowler's match': the Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's, known after the captain of Eton College, Robert St Leger Fowler, and described as "what might just be the greatest cricket match of all time".
• 12 July – Charles Rolls becomes the first British aviation fatality when his French-built Wright aeroplane suffers a broken rudder at an altitude of 80 feet and crashes during a contest at Bournemouth.
• 29 July – In a legal cause célèbre, the Crown drops its charge against naval cadet George Archer-Shee for stealing a postal order.
• 31 July – Dr. Crippen arrested on board the SS Montrose after a telegraph is sent to the ship's captain.
• September – Vaughan Williams' string orchestral work Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is performed for the first time under the composer's baton at Gloucester Cathedral for the Three Choirs Festival.
• 1 September – Ninian Park football stadium is opened in Cardiff, to serve Cardiff City F.C., who are members of the English Football League despite being based in Wales.
• 11 September – English-born actor-aviator Robert Loraine makes an aeroplane flight from Wales across the Irish Sea, landing some 200 feet short of the Irish coast in Dublin Bay.
• 5 October – Portugal becomes a republic; King Manuel II flees to England.
• 18 October
• * Dr. Crippen put on trial for murder at the Old Bailey.
• * First B-type double-decker bus, built and operated by the London General Omnibus Company, enters service. Designed by Frank Searle and considered the first mass-produced bus, around 2,800 are built up to 1919, displacing LGOC’s last horse-drawn buses by the end of 1911 and with examples in regular use up to 1926, about 900 seeing service on the Western Front.
• 20 October – RMS Olympic is launched at the Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast.
• 22 October
• * Dr. Crippen found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
• * Women chainmakers of Cradley Heath in the Black Country, led by Mary Macarthur, win a minimum wage following a ten-week strike; this effectively doubles their pay.
• 1 November – coal miners are balloted for strike action by the South Wales Miners' Federation following a lock-out, resulting in 12,000 men working for the Cambrian Combine beginning a 10-month strike.
• 7–8 November – conflict between striking miners and police forces in the Rhondda, South Wales, leads to the Tonypandy riots.
• 8 November – 15 January 1911 – Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London, organised by Roger Fry, introduces the term Post-Impressionism.
• 18 November – Black Friday: 300 suffragettes clash with police outside Parliament over the failure of the Conciliation Bill.
• 23 November – Dr. Crippen hanged at Pentonville Prison, London.
• 26 November – suffragist Hugh Franklin attempts to whip Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, on a train over the police treatment of suffragettes.
• 3–19 December – The second general election of 1910 is held for the electorate to resolve the battle of wills between the Houses of Commons and the House of Lords. The results are: Liberals, 272; Labour, 42; Irish Nationalists, 84; Unionists, 272 – making a majority of 126 for restriction of the powers of the Lords and for Irish Home Rule. This will be the last UK general election on which regular voting extends over several days and the last in which only men could vote.
• 16 December – In Houndsditch, London, four anarchists shoot three policemen in botched raid on a jewellers – three are arrested, other members of the gang escape but are later cornered in the 'siege of Sidney Street'.
• 21 December – The Pretoria Pit disaster: a massive underground explosion in a colliery belonging to the Hulton Colliery Company at Westhoughton in Lancashire, kills 344, with just one survivor, the second-worst mining accident in England and the third-worst in Britain.
• 26 December – London Palladium music hall opens.

  Undated

• Bamforths of Holmfirth begin publishing 'saucy' seaside postcards.
• Cinematograph Act 1909 comes into effect providing for licensing of cinemas by local authorities.
• Girl Guides' Association founded.
• New Birmingham Oratory building completed.
• Admiralty Arch in London completed.

  Publications

• Arnold Bennett's novel Clayhanger, first in The Clayhanger Family series.
• John Buchan's novel Prester John.
• Gilbert Cannan's novel Devious Ways.
• Jeffery Farnol's novel The Broad Highway.
• E. M. Forster's novel Howards End.
• Rudyard Kipling's collection Rewards and Fairies containing the first publication of the poem "If—".
• H. G. Wells' novel The History of Mr Polly.
• Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's book Principia Mathematica vol. 1, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.

  Births

• 11 January – Maurice Buckmaster, head of Special Operations Executive
• 15 January – Stephen Gilbert, artist
• 29 January – Colin Middleton, artist
• 10 February – Joyce Grenfell, actress, comedian and singer-songwriter
• 11 February – L. T. C. Rolt, writer
• 13 February – William Shockley, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 21 February – Douglas Bader, World War II fighter pilot
• 1 March – Archer Martin, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1 March – David Niven, actor
• 17 March – Molly Weir, actress
• 22 March – Nicholas Monsarrat, novelist
• 27 March – Robert Harling, typographer
• 31 March – Edward Seago, artist
• 8 April – Denis Redman, major-general
• 19 April – Humphrey Spender, photojournalist
• 3 May – Bernard Orchard, biblical scholar
• 5 May – Charles Harington, Army officer
• 10 May – Arthur Marshall, writer and broadcaster
• 12 May – Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 16 May – Richard Usborne, journalist and author
• 30 May – Harry Bernstein, author
• 1 June – Robert Megarry, judge
• 4 June – Christopher Cockerell, inventor
• 12 June – Bill Naughton, playwright
• 13 June – Mary Whitehouse, 'Clean-Up TV' and Christian morality campaigner
• 17 June – Sam Costa, crooner, radio actor and disc jockey
• 22 June
• * Peter Pears, tenor
• * Anne Ziegler, born Irené Frances Eastwood, soprano
• 11 July – Hugh B. Cave, science fiction writer
• 14 July – Vincent Brome, biographer and novelist
• 24 July – Edward Ford, courtier
• 11 August – Hermione Hammond, painter
• 19 August – Gerald Ellison, Bishop of London
• 20 August – Harry Errington, World War II firefighter
• 2 September – Donald Watson, animal rights activist
• 5 September – Leila Mackinlay, romance writer
• 10 September
• *Eric de Maré, architectural photographer
• *Betty Neels, novelist
• *Denis Richards, historian
• 16 October – Misha Black, architect and designer
• 20 October – Hopper Read, cricketer
• 31 October – Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, banker, zoologist and intelligence officer
• 8 November – Denis Mahon, art historian and collector
• 14 November – Eric Malpass, novelist
• 15 November – Hugh Greene, television director and journalist
• 19 November – Griffith Jones, actor
• 29 November – Hans Singer, German-born economist
• 1 December – Alicia Markova, ballerina
• 2 December – Penelope Aitken, socialite
• 4 December – Harry Wingfield, illustrator
• 18 December – Leon Greenman, anti-fascist campaigner
• 29 December – Ronald Coase, economist Nobel Prize laureate

  Deaths

• 27 January – Thomas Crapper, inventor
• 3 May – Lottie Collins, singer and dancer
• 6 May – Edward VII
• 31 May – Elizabeth Blackwell, American-domiciled abolitionist and women's rights activist
• 12 July – Charles Stewart Rolls, aviator and automobile manufacturer
• 13 August – Florence Nightingale, nurse
• 7 September – William Holman Hunt, painter
• 12 September – Cuthbert A. Brereton, civil engineer
• 19 September – William Maclagan, former Archbishop of York
• 29 December – Reginald Doherty, tennis player