1922 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister
• * David Lloyd George
• * Bonar Law
• Parliament
• * 31st
• * 32nd

  Overview

Events

• January
• * The year begins with the British Empire at its largest extent, covering a quarter of the world and ruling over one in four people on earth.
• * A letter written by Ifan ab Owen Edwards to the children's periodical Cymru'r Plant results in establishment in Wales of the youth organisation Urdd Gobaith Cymru.
• 1 January – Transport and General Workers' Union formed by merger of fourteen smaller unions under its first general secretary Ernest Bevin, forming by far the largest trade union.
• 7 January – In Ireland, Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
• 12 January
• * The UK Government releases remaining Irish prisoners captured in the War of Independence.
• * HMS Victory permanently dry docked at Portsmouth.
• 13 January – Flu epidemic has claimed 804 victims in Britain.
• 24 January – Façade – An Entertainment, poems by Edith Sitwell recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton, first performed, privately in London.
• 1 February – Formal handing over of Beggars Bush Barracks takes place in Dublin, marking the first act of British military withdrawal from Ireland.
• 6 February – Washington Naval Treaty signed between the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy.
• 14 February – The world's first regular radio broadcasts for entertainment, made by Peter Eckersley, begin transmission on station 2MT from a hut at the Marconi Company laboratories at Writtle near Chelmsford in Essex. Initially they are for half an hour on Tuesday evenings.
• 28 February – Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence by the United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt and grants the country nominal independence, reserving control of military and diplomatic matters.
• 28 February - Princess Mary marries Viscount Lascelles, elder son of the then-Earl of Harewood.
• 1 March – The Civil Aviation Authority is established.
• 6 March – An explosion at a Dudley Port factory kills nineteen female youth workers aged 13-15 years employed on dismantling explosive cartridges under dangerous working conditions.
• 29 April – Huddersfield Town A.F.C. win the FA Cup with a 1–0 win over Preston North End in the final at Stamford Bridge, London. From next year, the final will be played at the new stadium being built at Wembley in North London.
• 10 May – Ivy Williams becomes the first woman member of the English Bar.
• 11 May – Radio station 2LO becomes the second to broadcast regularly in the UK, operating from Marconi House in London, initially for one hour a day.
• 16 May – The final group of British troops leave the Curragh Camp in Ireland.
• 29 May – British Liberal MP Horatio Bottomley jailed for seven years for fraud.
• 1 June – Official founding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• 22 June – Irish Republican Army agents assassinate Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in Belgravia; the assassins are sentenced to death on 18 July.
• 17 July – County Hall, London opened, as the new headquarters of the London County Council.
• 20 July – Infanticide Act effectively abolishes the death penalty for a woman who deliberately kills her newborn child while the balance of her mind is disturbed as a result of giving birth, by providing a partial defence to murder.
• 21 July – Launch of the iconic Austin 7 car, produced at Longbridge. The car will inspire numerous other automotive designs, and remain in production for another seventeen years until 1939.
• 17 August – Dublin Castle is formally handed over to the Irish Republican Army as the last British Army troops withdraw from the country.
• 5 September – An underground explosion at Haig Pit, Whitehaven, in the Cumberland Coalfield, kills 39 people.
• 8–9 September – Captain Frank L. Barnard wins the first King's Cup Race for aeroplanes, flying from Croydon Aerodrome to Glasgow and back in 6 hours 32 minutes in an Airco DH.4A.
• 7 October – Speaking on the radio station 2LO, the Prince of Wales becomes the first member of the royal family to make a public broadcast.
• 17 October – First hunger march sets out, from Glasgow to London.
• 18 October – The British Broadcasting Company is formed.
• 19 October – David Lloyd George's Coalition Ministry resigns over the Chanak Crisis and a Carlton Club meeting of Conservative MPs decisively votes not to maintain the coalition government.
• 23 October – Bonar Law's Conservative government takes office.
• 1 November – A broadcasting licence fee of ten shillings is introduced.
• 2 November – Archaeologist Leonard Woolley begins excavations at the Sumerian city of Ur.
• 4 November – In Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
• 14 November – London radio station 2LO transfers to the British Broadcasting Company and transmits its first two news bulletins.
• 15 November
• * Af the 1922 general election, the first following the partition of Ireland, the Conservative Party under Bonar Law wins an overall majority. The Labour Party overtakes the divided Liberal Party as Britain's second-largest political party. A dining club of newly-elected Conservative MPs evolves the following year into the 1922 Committee.
• * First BBC radio broadcasts from Birmingham and Manchester.
• 26 November – In Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon become the first people to see inside KV62, the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, in over 3,000 years.
• 5 December – UK Parliament enacts the Irish Free State Constitution Act, by which it legally sanctions the new Constitution of the Irish Free State.
• 6 December – The Irish Free State officially comes into existence. George V becomes the Free State's monarch.
• 7 December – The Parliament of Northern Ireland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom.
• 10 December – Francis William Aston wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule".
• 11 December – End of the trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters at the Old Bailey in London for the murder of Thompson's husband. Both found guilty and sentenced to death.
• 18 December – Carrie Morrison becomes the first female solicitor admitted to practice in England.
• 24 December – First BBC broadcast from Newcastle upon Tyne.

Undated

• Meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson proposes a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used today, in his work Weather Prediction by Numerical Process.
• Archibald Hill wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery relating to the production of heat in the muscle". This award is announced on 25 October 1923.
• Production of Branston Pickle by Crosse & Blackwell begins at Branston, Staffordshire.
• The statue of Eros is taken away from Piccadilly Circus in London so that the new Underground station can be built. It will not return until 1931.

  Publications

• Edmund Blunden's collection The Shepherd, and Other Poems of Peace and War.
• Barbara Cartland's first novel Jigsaw.
• Agatha Christie's novel The Secret Adversary.
• Richmal Crompton's children's stories Just William.
• John Drinkwater's poems Preludes 1921–1922.
• T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, in the first issue of The Criterion.
• Thomas Hardy's collection Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses.
• James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
• Isaac Rosenberg's Poems.
• Sacheverell Sitwell's collection The Hundred and One Harlequins, and Other Poems.
• Virginia Woolf's novel Jacob's Room.

  Births

• 3 January – Ronald Smith, pianist and conductor
• 4 January – Rosalie Crutchley, actress
• 12 January - Eric Heffer, politician
• 13 January – John Hewer, actor
• 20 January
• * James Hanson, Baron Hanson, entrepreneur
• * Elizabeth Diana Percy, Duchess of Northumberland
• 21 January – Paul Scofield, actor
• 23 January – Vernon Scannell, poet
• 25 January – Raymond Baxter, television presenter
• 26 January – Michael Bentine, actor
• 2 February – Jimmy Sirrel, footballer and football manager
• 6 February
• * Patrick Macnee, actor
• * Denis Norden, television and radio scriptwriter
• 7 February – Hattie Jacques, actress
• 9 February – Jim Laker, cricketer
• 13 February – Francis Pym, politician
• 26 February – Margaret Leighton, actress
• 28 February – Ernie Clements, racing cyclist
• 1 March – Michael Flanders, actor and songwriter
• 4 March – Geoff Tootill, computer scientist
• 14 March – Colin St John Wilson, architect
• 25 March – Stephen Toulmin, philosopher
• 30 March – Felix Bowness, actor
• 31 March – Lionel Davidson, novelist
• 4 April – Anthony Brooks, soldier and spy
• 5 April
• * Tom Finney, footballer
• * Christopher Hewett, actor
• 13 April – John Braine, novelist
• 15 April – Peter Moffatt, television director
• 16 April – Kingsley Amis, novelist
• 18 April – Nigel Kneale, screenwriter
• 20 April – Richard Gordon Wakeford, airman and RAF officer
• 27 April – Sheila Scott, actress and aviator
• 28 April – Alistair MacLean, writer
• 2 May – Wilfrid Butt, biochemist
• 27 May – Christopher Lee, film actor
• 31 May – Denholm Elliott, film actor
• 2 June – Raffaello de Banfield, composer
• 15 June – John Veale, composer
• 25 June – Maxime de la Falaise, model and actress
• 26 June – Alan T. Peacock, economist
• 21 July – Mollie Sugden, actress
• 25 July – Fred Yates, painter
• 2 August – Len Murray, trade union leader
• 6 August – Freddie Laker, airline entrepreneur
• 9 August – Philip Larkin, poet
• 20 August – Lionel Kochan, historian
• 22 August – Dave Freeman, scriptwriter
• 23 August – Marianne Stone, actress
• 6 September – Archie Elliott, judge
• 8 September – Curtis Keeble, diplomat
• 9 September – Pauline Baynes, artist
• 17 September
• * Naomi Datta, geneticist
• * Ursula Howells, actress
• 21 September – Hugh Lloyd-Jones, classical scholar
• 27 September - Vera Greenaway, Welsh, loving grandmother
• 3 October – John Craxton, painter
• 4 October – Hector Monro, Baron Monro of Langholm, Conservative politician
• 5 October – Jock Stein, footballer and manager of Scotland
• 16 October – Max Bygraves, singer and entertainer
• 23 October – Jean Barker, Baroness Trumpington, née Campbell-Harris, socialite and Conservative politician
• 18 November – Peter Douglas Kennedy, folk song collector
• 24 November – Joan Turner, actress and singer
• 2 December – Alan Cook, physicist
• 8 December – Elkan Allan, television producer
• 18 December – Tony Melody, actor
• 26 December – Richard Mayes, actor

  Deaths

• 5 January – Sir Ernest Shackleton, explorer
• 15 January – John Kirk, explorer
• 22 January
• * James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, politician, diplomat and historian
• * William Christie, astronomer
• 3 February – John Butler Yeats, Irish portrait artist
• 4 February – Henry Jones, philosopher
• 24 March – Walter Parr, preacher
• 10 April – John Benn, politician
• 14 May – Mary Victoria Hamilton, Scottish-German-French great-grandmother of Prince Rainier III of Monaco
• 15 May – Leslie Ward, caricaturist
• 17 May – Dorothy Levitt, racing driver
• 4 June – W. H. R. Rivers, anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist
• 18 June – Belgrave Ninnis, naval surgeon and Arctic explorer
• 2 August – Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born inventor
• 14 August – Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, newspaper and publishing magnate
• 22 August – Thomas Brock, sculptor
• 10 September – Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, poet
• 22 September – Sir Charles Santley, baritone
• 7 October
• * Montague Gluckstein, caterer
• * Marie Lloyd, music-hall singer
• 24 October – George Cadbury, businessman and philanthropist
• 14 December – Henry Pierrepoint, executioner