1943 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George VI
• Prime Minister – Winston Churchill
• Parliament – 37th

  Events

• 1 January
• * Total ban on civilians travelling to the Isle of Wight.
• * Utility furniture first becomes available.
• 14 January – to counter a "serious increase" in U-boat operations the Royal Air Force switches its bombing campaign from industrial targets to U-boat bases in France attacking Lorient and Cherbourg-Octeville.
• 17 January – anti-aircraft shrapnel shells kill 23 people and injure 60 during a raid on London by 118 planes; six are reported losses.
• 20 January – Sandhurst Road School Disaster: a bomb kills 38 children and 6 teachers at a school in Catford, south-east London.
• 23 January – World War II: British forces capture Tripoli from the Nazis.
• 11 February – in the Midlothian and Peebles Northern by-election, the radical socialist Common Wealth Party candidate Tom Wintringham comes close to winning the seat.
• 13 February – Nuffield Foundation established by William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield.
• 3 March – panic at the sound of new anti-aircraft rockets leads to a crush at Bethnal Green tube station, killing 183 people.
• 4-12 March – "Exercise Spartan", a major rehearsal for next year's Allied Invasion of Normandy, is staged across southern England.
• 5 March – the Gloster Meteor, the first operational military jet aircraft for the Allies, has its first test flight, at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire.
• 14 March – submarine HMS Thunderbolt sunk off Sicily by an Italian corvette, the second time this vessel has been lost with all hands.
• 17 March – last church service in the village of Derwent, Derbyshire, before it is demolished for construction of Ladybower Reservoir.
• 27 March – Royal Navy escort carrier is destroyed by an accidental explosion in the Firth of Clyde, killing 379 of the crew of 528.
• 13 April – release of the Ministry of Information film Desert Victory, which will win this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
• 21 April – worst bombing of Aberdeen.
• 7 May – capture of Tunis ends the campaign in North Africa.
• 16-17 May – Operation Chastise takes place: No. 617 Squadron RAF use bouncing bombs to breach German dams in the Ruhr Valley.
• 19 May – Winston Churchill addresses a joint session of the United States Congress.
• 1 June – BOAC Flight 777, a DC-3 on a scheduled passenger flight, is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by eight German Junkers Ju 88s; all 17 persons aboard perish, including the actor Leslie Howard.
• 24/25 June – Battle of Bamber Bridge: trouble flares between black American soldiers and white military police stationed in the Lancashire town; one black soldier is killed.
• 9 July–17 August – World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily.
• 5 August – North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board established by Act of Parliament.
• 3-16 September – World War II: Allied invasion of Italy: Allied forces under General Sir Bernard Montgomery land in mainland Italy. On 16 September, the Salerno Mutiny occurs when soldiers of the British Army's X Corps refuse postings to new units.
• 15 September – first examples of standard cottages for farmworkers are completed, at Hildenborough, Kent.
• 11 November
• * Regency Act is passed allowing Counsellors of State absent during the Sovereign's absence not to be listed among the appointments; and that the heir-apparent or presumptive to the Throne need only to be eighteen to be a Counsellor.
• * Total evacuation of an area near Portmahomack in Scotland begins, to make way for rehearsal of the Normandy Landings.
• 16 November – total evacuation of the village of Imber on Salisbury Plain concludes, to make way for U.S. troop training; total evacuation of part of the South Hams of Devon begins, to make way for rehearsal of the Normandy Landings.
• 22-26 November – Cairo Conference : Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill, President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chairman of the National Government of China Chiang Kai-shek meet at Cairo in Egypt to discuss ways to defeat Japan in the Pacific War.
• 26 November – World War II: British troopship HMT Rohna is sunk off the north African coast by a Luftwaffe Henschel Hs 293 radio controlled glide bomb killing 1015.
• 2 December
• * First "Bevin Boys" selected from conscripts to work in the coal mines.
• * Pigeons White Vision, Winkie and Tyke become the first recipients of the Dickin Medal, instituted to honour the work of animals in war.
• 26 December – World War II: Battle of the North Cape – German battleship Scharnhorst is torpedoed and sunk in a night action north of the Arctic circle by Royal Navy battleship HMS Duke of York and her escorts with the loss of all but 36 of the German crew of 1,943; this is the war's last action between big-gun capital ships of Britain and Germany.
• December – construction of prototype Mark I Colossus computer, the world's first totally electronic programmable computing device, at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, to assist in cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park, is completed.
• Undated – Anne Loughlin becomes the first trades unionist appointed DBE and the first female President of the Trades Union Congress.

  Publications

• Nigel Balchin's novel The Small Back Room.
• T. S. Eliot's poetry Four Quartets.
• C. S. Lewis' novel Perelandra.
• Nikolaus Pevsner's book An Outline of European Architecture.
• Malcolm Saville's children's novel Mystery at Witchend, first in The Lone Pine series.

  Births

January – March

• 6 January – Terry Venables, English football manager
• 9 January – Freddie Starr, English comedian and singer
• 10 January – Christopher Wicking, English screenwriter
• 15 January – Margaret Beckett, politician
• 16 January
• * Michael Attwell, English actor
• * Brian Ferneyhough, British composer
• 20 January – Mel Hague, English singer and author
• 29 January – Tony Blackburn, British radio disc jockey
• 7 February – Gareth Hunt, English actor
• 15 February – Lal Waterson, English folk singer-songwriter
• 16 February – Anthony Dowell, ballet dancer and artistic director of the Royal Ballet
• 18 February – Graeme Garden, Scottish writer, comedian, and actor
• 19 February – Tim Hunt, British biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• 20 February – Mike Leigh, British film director
• 24 February – George Harrison, English musician
• 26 February – Darcus Howe, Trinidadian-born civil rights activist
• 2 March – Tony Meehan, English pop drummer
• 8 March – Lynn Redgrave, English actress
• 16 March
• * Roger Dean, English guitarist
• * John Leeson, English actor
• 21 March – Vivian Stanshall, English comedy musician, writer, artist and broadcaster
• 22 March – Keith Relf, English blues rock vocalist and harmonica player
• 29 March
• * Eric Idle, English comedy actor, writer and composer
• * John Major, British Conservative politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

  April – June

• 2 April
• * Frank Feather, British business futurist and author
• * Nicky James, British singer-songwriter
• 3 April – Jonathan Lynn, English comedy screenwriter and actor
• 6 April – Max Clifford, publicist
• 20 April – John Eliot Gardiner, English conductor
• 21 April – Alan Fersht, English chemist and academic
• 24 April – Hew Pike, general
• 25 April – Tony Christie, singer
• 28 April – Jeffrey Tate, orchestral conductor
• 1 May – Ian Dunn, gay and paedophile rights activist, founder of the Scottish Minorities Group
• 5 May – Michael Palin, comedian
• 8 May – Pat Barker, writer and historian
• 12 May – Tom Sawyer, Baron Sawyer, academic and politician
• 13 May – Anthony Clarke, Baron Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony, judge
• 14 May – Jack Bruce, musician and songwriter
• 22 May – Betty Williams, Northern Irish political activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 26 May
• * Ian Breakwell, artist
• * Carol Lee Scott, television actress and singer
• 27 May – Cilla Black, born Priscilla White, singer-songwriter and television personality
• 1 June – David Newbery, English economist and academic
• 8 June – Colin Baker, actor
• 13 June – Malcolm McDowell, actor
• 22 June – J. Michael Kosterlitz, Scottish-born condensed matter physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics
• 29 June – Maureen O'Brien, actress

  July – September

• 10 July – Gavin Strang, politician
• 12 July – Christine McVie, née Perfect, pop rock musician
• 15 July – Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astronomer
• 20 July – Wendy Richard, actress
• 26 July
• * Andrew Crozier, poet
• * Mick Jagger, English rock singer
• 28 July – Rick Wright, English progressive rock keyboardist
• 31 July – John Dyson, Master of the Rolls
• 2 August – Rose Tremain, née Thomson, fiction writer
• 19 August – Billy J. Kramer, né William H. Ashton, pop singer
• 20 August – Sylvester McCoy, né Percy Kent-Smith, Scottish actor
• 22 August – Alun Michael, politician
• 5 September – Richard Dunn, CEO of Thames Television
• 6 September
• * Richard J. Roberts, English biochemist and molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• * Roger Waters, English musician
• 28 September – Mike Dickin, DJ and radio personality
• 30 September – Ian Ogilvy, English actor

  October – December

• 11 October – John Nettles, actor
• 21 October – Jason Hughes, sociologist
• 23 October – Anita Roddick, businesswoman
• 29 October – Norman Hunter, England footballer
• 31 October – Paul Frampton, English physicist
• 8 November – Martin Peters, England footballer
• 7 December – Sue Johnston, actress
• 11 December – Betty Kershaw, nurse and academic
• 17 December – Ron Geesin, musician and songwriter
• 18 December – Keith Richards, rock guitarist and songwriter
• 27 December – Peter Sinfield, lyricist and producer
• 28 December – Richard Whiteley, television presenter
• 31 December – Ben Kingsley, actor

  Deaths

January – June

• 3 January – F. M. Cornford, classicist and poet
• 9 January – R. G. Collingwood, philosopher and historian
• 19 January – William Pettigrew, Scottish-born Christian missionary to India
• 2 February – Alfred Cavendish, general
• 7 February – Clara Novello Davies, Welsh-born singer
• 9 February – Eustace Fiennes, soldier and politician
• 23 February – Edward Heaton-Ellis, naval officer
• 27 February – Dilly Knox, cryptanalyst
• 10 March – Laurence Binyon, poet and scholar
• 14 March – Mervyn Herbert, Viscount Clive, British peer, army officer
• 26 March – Leonard Darwin, soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist
• 28 March
• * Ben Davies, operatic tenor
• * Edward Heron-Allen, polymath, lawyer, scientist and scholar
• * Robert W. Paul, pioneer of cinematography
• 5 April – William George Howard Gritten, barrister, writer and Conservative politician
• 26 April – Alastair Windsor, 2nd Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, son of Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught
• 29 April – Sidney Keyes, poet
• 30 April – Beatrice Webb, socialist, economist and reformer
• 5 May – Gordon Hewart, 1st Viscount Hewart, politician and judge
• 25 May – Percy Shakespeare, painter
• 27 May – Arthur Mee, topographer and children's encyclopedist
• 17 May – Montagu Love, actor
• 1 June – Leslie Howard, actor
• 3 June – Osgood Hanbury, pilot
• 17 June – Annie S. Swan, Scottish romantic fiction writer and political activist

  July – December

• 12 August – Bobby Peel, English cricketer
• 26 August – Ted Ray, golfer
• 27 August – William de Burgh, philosopher
• 6 September – Reginald McKenna, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer
• 23 September – Elinor Glyn, romantic fiction writer and screenwriter
• 7 October – Radclyffe Hall, author and poet
• 21 October – Sir Dudley Pound, admiral
• 22 October – Sir William Reginald Hall, admiral and cryptanalyst
• 28 October – Sir Aurel Stein, archaeologist
• 26 November – Prince Hubertus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, pilot, great grandson of Queen Victoria
• 6 December – G. O. Smith, amateur footballer and cricketer
• 8 December – Donald Mackintosh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow
• 18 December – Hector Gray, RAF officer
• 22 December – Beatrix Potter, children's author, illustrator and conservationist