Chapter 3: A Long and Illustrious History

The 20th Century

Last checked: 15 July 2026

• 1The early 20th century (before WWI) was a time of optimism and social progress: the government introduced financial help for the unemployed, old-age pensions and free school meals.
• 2The First World War began when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 — the event that triggered the war (though it had many causes, including imperial and military rivalry).
• 3Britain fought as part of the Allied Powers — with (among others) France, Russia, Japan, Belgium and Serbia, later joined by Greece, Italy, Romania and the United States — against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and later Bulgaria.
• 4Soldiers from all over the British Empire fought in WWI — from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the West Indies and Africa.
• 5At the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 the British suffered around 60,000 casualties on the first day alone.
• 6The First World War ended at 11am on 11 November 1918 with victory for Britain and its allies; millions were killed or wounded, more than 2 million of them British.
• 7Ireland: a Home Rule Bill / promise of self-government was postponed by the outbreak of WWI.
• 8In 1916 Irish Nationalists staged the Easter Rising against British rule in Dublin; its leaders were executed, and a guerrilla war against the British followed.
• 9In 1921 a peace treaty was agreed; in 1922 Ireland was divided: six mainly-Protestant counties in the north remained part of the UK as Northern Ireland, while the rest became the Irish Free State (a self-governing dominion), which became a republic in 1949.
• 10A civil war followed in the new Irish state; conflict over Northern Ireland's status ("the Troubles") re-emerged decades later.
• 11In the 1920s many people's living conditions improved, but in 1929 the world entered the Great Depression: mass unemployment hit traditional heavy industries (e.g. shipbuilding) hardest, while new industries — automobile and aviation — developed.
• 12The BBC started radio broadcasts in 1922 and began the world's first regular television service in 1936.
• 13The Second World War: Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933; Britain and France initially tried to avoid war (appeasement).
• 14When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
• 15The Axis powers were Germany, Italy and Japan; the Allies included Britain, France, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa — later joined by the USSR and the USA.
• 16Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 and led Britain through the war; in 2002 the public voted him the Greatest Briton of all time in a BBC poll.
• 17Famous Churchill wartime phrases include fighting on the beaches, "their finest hour", and praise for RAF pilots — "never was so much owed by so many to so few".
• 18In 1940 around 300,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk, France, rescued by a fleet that included hundreds of small volunteer boats — the "Dunkirk spirit".
• 19In the summer of 1940 the RAF defeated the German air force in the Battle of Britain — the crucial aerial battle; the British fighter planes were the Spitfire and the Hurricane.
• 20German bombing of London (especially the East End) and other cities such as Coventry was called the Blitz; "Blitz spirit" describes British resilience under bombing.
• 21Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941; Japan attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, bringing the United States into the war; Britain also fought Japan in Asia (e.g. Singapore fell; fighting in Burma).
• 22On D-Day, 6 June 1944, Allied forces landed in Normandy to liberate western Europe.
• 23The war in Europe ended with Germany's defeat in May 1945; Japan surrendered in August 1945 after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 24Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), born in Scotland, discovered penicillin in 1928; he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 — penicillin is the basis of modern antibiotics.
• 25Great 20th-century British inventions/discoveries (handbook list): television — pioneered by Scotsman John Logie Baird (first pictures 1920s); radar — Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1930s); the jet engine — Sir Frank Whittle (1930s); the theoretical Turing machine — Alan Turing (1930s), basis of modern computing.
• 26More inventions: the hovercraft — Sir Christopher Cockerell (1950s); the structure of DNA discovered in 1953 with Francis Crick among those awarded the Nobel Prize; the cash-dispensing ATM invented by James Goodfellow.
• 27More inventions: IVF therapy for infertility — pioneered by Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, first "test-tube baby" born 1978; cloning of Dolly the sheep — Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell (1996); the World Wide Web — invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, with information first exchanged on the web on 25 December 1990.
• 28More inventions: the harrier jump jet (vertical take-off) developed in the UK; hip replacement pioneered by John Charnley; MRI co-developed by Sir Peter Mansfield; insulin co-discovered by John Macleod (Scottish); Concorde and the hovercraft as transport landmarks.