1915 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith
• Parliament – 30th

  Events

• 1 January – World War I: sinking of the battleship HMS Formidable, off Lyme Regis, Dorset, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat. 35 officers and 512 men are lost out of a total complement of 780.
• 19 January – World War I: German zeppelins bomb the towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn for the first time, killing more than twenty.
• 24 January – World War I: Battle of Dogger Bank: British Grand Fleet defeats the German High Seas Fleet, sinking the armoured cruiser.
• January – enters service as the Royal Navy's first oil-fired battleship.
• 1 February – Photographs required in British passports for the first time.
• 18 February – World War I: Germany regards waters around the British Isles to be a war zone from this date, as part of its U-boat campaign.
• 7 March – British collier Bengrove is torpedoed and sunk in the Bristol channel 5 nautical miles north east of Ilfracombe, Devon, England by SM U-20, with all 33 crew rescued.
• 11 March – World War I: Sinking of armed merchantman off Galloway by German U-boat SM U-27. Around 200 crew are lost, a number of bodies being washed up on the Isle of Man, with only 26 saved.
• 14 March – World War I:
• * Battle of Más a Tierra: Off the coast of Chile, the Royal Navy forces the German light cruiser SMS Dresden to scuttle.
• * Britain, France and the Russian Empire agree to give Constantinople and the Bosporus to Russia in case of victory.
• 18 March – World War I:
• * British attack on the Dardanelles fails.
• * Royal Navy battleship sinks German submarine U-29 with all hands in the Pentland Firth by ramming her, the only time this tactic is known to have been successfully used by a battleship.
• 24 April – the FA Cup is won by Sheffield United F.C., who defeat Chelsea 3–0 in the final at Old Trafford, Manchester. The competition will now be abandoned until the war is over.
• 25 April – World War I: Gallipoli Campaign: Landing at Cape Helles by British and French forces, heavily opposed by Ottoman troops. The Lancashire Fusiliers win 'six VCs before breakfast'.
• 3 May – the oldest continually operational Royal Air Force station, RAF Northolt, opens as the home to the Royal Flying Corps' No. 4 Reserve Aeroplane Squadron.
• 7 May – World War I: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania: British ocean liner is sunk by Imperial German Navy U-boat U-20 off the south-west coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 civilians en route from New York to Liverpool.
• 17 May – the last purely Liberal government ends when Prime Minister H. H. Asquith decides to form an all-party coalition, precipitated by reports in the Northcliffe press of deficiencies in the supply of shells for the army following the 9 May British defeat at the Battle of Aubers Ridge.
• 22 May – Quintinshill rail disaster near Gretna Green in Scotland: collision and fire kill 226, mostly troops, the largest number of fatalities in a rail accident in the U.K.
• 25 May – the Prime Minister forms the Asquith coalition ministry, a national wartime coalition government of twelve Liberals, eight Unionists and one Labour member. David Lloyd George is appointed first Minister of Munitions.
• 27 May – explodes and sinks while loading mines off Sheerness with the loss of 352 lives.
• 31 May – World War I: Zeppelins raid London for the first time.
• 10 June – Vorticist exhibition opens at the Doré Gallery, London.
• 16 June – foundation of the British Women's Institute.
• 8 July – National Registration Act: All citizens aged 15-65 to be registered on 15 August.
• 14 July – Opening of McMahon–Hussein Correspondence in which, in exchange for assistance against the Ottoman Empire, the British offer Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, their recognition of an independent Arab kingdom, although clear terms are never agreed.
• August
• * Munitions of War Act places munitions factories and their labour relations under control of the Minister of Munitions.
• * Edith Smith in Grantham becomes the country's first woman police officer granted full power of arrest.
• 16 August – World War I: a German U-boat shells the north-west coast in an attack on the chemical plant at Lowca.
• 6 September – Little Willie, the prototype military tank developed by William Foster & Co. of Lincoln, is first tested by the British Army.
• 16 September – first Women's Institute meeting held in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Wales. The first meeting in England is that of the Singleton Institute at Charlton, West Sussex on 9 November.
• 21 September – Cecil Chubb acquires Stonehenge at an auction for £6600.
• 25 September-14 October – World War I: Battle of Loos: British forces take the French town of Loos but with substantial casualties and are unable to press their advantage. This is the first time the British use poison gas in World War I and also the first large-scale use of 'New' or Kitchener's Army units.
• October-November – Derby Scheme, a voluntary military recruitment scheme.
• 12 October – World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.
• 20 October – women officially permitted to act as bus and tram conductors for the duration of the War; but have been employed in Glasgow and other places in the U.K. since April.
• 12 November – William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg win the Nobel Prize in Physics "For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays."
• 24 November – Bruce Bairnsfather's "Fragments from France" cartoon featuring "Old Bill" saying "Well, if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it" is published in the Bystander.
• 27 November – Government introduces legislation to restrict housing rents to their pre-war level following Glasgow rent strikes led by Mary Barbour.
• 10 December – World War I: Douglas Haig is appointed to succeed John French in command of the British Expeditionary Force.
• 30 December – armoured cruiser capsizes at anchor in the Cromarty Firth as the result of an internal explosion in her ammunition stores; 390 sailors and some civilians are killed.

  Undated

• Pommern wins the English Triple Crown by finishing first in the Derby, 2,000 Guineas and St Leger.

  Publications

• Rupert Brooke's collection 1914 & Other Poems .
• John Buchan's novel The Thirty-nine Steps.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear.
• Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good Soldier.
• D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow.
• W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage.
• Dorothy Richardson's stream of consciousness novel Pointed Roofs.
• P. G. Wodehouse's first Blandings Castle novel, Something Fresh.

  Births

• 4 January – Meg Mundy, actress
• 6 January – Alan Watts, Zen Buddhist philosopher
• 23 January – Arthur Lewis, economist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 30 January – John Profumo, cabinet minister
• 1 February – Stanley Matthews, footballer
• 4 February – Norman Wisdom, comedian, singer and actor
• 5 February – John Bridge, World War II sailor
• 8 February – Peter Hill-Norton, admiral
• 11 February – Patrick Leigh Fermor, travel writer and soldier
• 16 February – Michael Relph, film producer and director
• 19 February – John Freeman, politician and television presenter
• 9 March – Johnnie Johnson, fighter pilot
• 31 March – Albert Hourani, historian
• 28 March – Jeremy Hutchinson, defence lawyer
• 6 April – Geoffrey Sherman, Royal Marines officer
• 17 April – Bertram James, fighter pilot
• 25 April – John James Cowperthwaite, civil servant
• 27 April – Eric Kemp, theologian and Bishop of Chichester
• 6 May – Sydney Carter, poet and songwriter
• 8 May
• * John George Macleod, doctor
• * Brian Pearce, Marxist historian and translator
• 10 May - Denis Thatcher, England businessman and married to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
• 15 May – Hilda Bernstein, English-born author, artist and activist
• 20 May – Peter Copley, actor
• 8 June – Julian Ridsdale, politician
• 22 June – Duncan Clark, hammer thrower
• 23 June – Robin Montgomerie-Charrington, racing driver
• 24 June – Fred Hoyle, astronomer
• 26 June – David Caminer, computer programmer
• 11 July – Leonard Goodwin, pharmacologist
• 15 July – David Tree, actor
• 14 August – Victor Mishcon, lawyer and politician
• 22 August – Hugh Paddick, actor
• 28 August – Max Robertson, sports commentator
• 30 August – Lillian May Davies, later Princess Lilian, Duchess of Halland, Welsh fashion model and Swedish princess
• 4 September – Roland Mathias, Welsh poet
• 22 September – Arthur Lowe, actor
• 23 September – John Rowlands, air marshal
• 8 October – Winifred Pennington, limnologist
• 11 October – T. Llew Jones, Welsh-language writer
• 13 October
• * Joan Hunter Dunn, muse of poet John Betjeman
• * Terry Frost, artist
• * Frederick Rosier, Air Chief Marshal
• * Barbara Wright, translator
• 3 November – Gilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, major-general
• 4 November – Marguerite Patten, home economist
• 16 November – Maurice Oldfield, intelligence chief
• 14 December – Anthony Kershaw, politician

  Deaths

• 3 January – James Elroy Flecker, poet, novelist and dramatist
• 13 January – Mary Slessor, Christian missionary
• 14 January – Richard Meux Benson, founder of an Anglican religious order
• 4 February – Mary Elizabeth Braddon, popular novelist
• 4 March – William Willett, promoter of daylight saving time
• 15 March – George Llewelyn Davies, one of the 'Lost Boys' who inspired Peter Pan
• 31 March – Wyndham Halswelle, runner
• 23 April – Rupert Brooke, poet
• 27 April – William Barnard Rhodes-Moorhouse, airman
• 26 May – Julian Grenfell, war poet
• 26 July – James Murray, Scottish-born lexicographer
• 30 July – Gerald William Grenfell, war poet
• 10 August – Henry Moseley, physicist
• 25 September – Rex Hargreaves, a son of Alice Liddell
• 26 September – Keir Hardie, Scottish socialist, first chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and pacifist
• 12 October – Edith Cavell, nurse
• 13 October – Charles Sorley, Scottish-born poet
• 23 October – W. G. Grace, cricketer
• 11 November – Robert Barker, footballer
• 23 December – Roland Leighton, war poet