1925 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

Monarch - George V

Prime Minister - Stanley Baldwin (Conservative)

Events

9 April - Administration of Estates Act abolishes the legal rule of primogeniture in England and Wales and the remnants of gavelkind in Kent.

May - Britain returns to the gold standard (the gold bullion standard rather than the specie standard).

1 May - Cyprus becomes a Crown Colony.

29 May - Last communication from the British explorer Percy Fawcett, a telegram to his wife, before he disappears in the Amazon.

10 June - Dibbles Bridge coach crash: a tour coach runs away following brake failure and falls off a bridge near Hebden, North Yorkshire, en route to Bolton Abbey, killing seven passengers.

1 to 30 June – The second-driest month in the EWP series (and driest of twentieth century) with an average of only 4.3 millimetres (0.17 in).

27 July - The BBC's Daventry transmitting station on Borough Hill, Daventry in central England opens as the world's first longwave broadcast radio transmitter, taking over from its Chelmsford facility.

31 July - "Red Friday": the Government announces that it will grant a subsidy to the coal industry for nine months to maintain existing wage levels while a Royal Commission conducts an inquiry into the industry's problems.

5 August - Establishment of political party Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru, initially focussing on Welsh language issues.

7 August - National Library of Scotland established by Act of Parliament to take over the national responsibilities of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh.

2 October - In London

John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image.

The city's first double-decker buses with covered top decks are introduced.

2 November - Eigiau Dam disaster kills seventeen in the North Wales village of Dolgarrog.

3 November - Alfred Hitchcock's first (silent) film, The Pleasure Garden, completed (but not released in the UK until 16 January 1927).

16 November - Carmaker Vauxhall Motors of Luton is purchased by American giant General Motors for $2.5 million.

1 December - Locarno Treaties signed in London.

3 December - Settlement of last remaining border disputes between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.

10 December - Austen Chamberlain wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Locarno Pact.

16 December - Construction of the Queensway Tunnel beneath the River Mersey begins.

Undated

Construction of the Royal Tweed Bridge in Berwick-upon-Tweed begins.

Clough Williams-Ellis begins construction of Portmeirion in North Wales.

US newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst buys the medieval St Donat's Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Publications

Elinor Brent-Dyer's schoolgirl story The School at the Chalet, first in the Chalet School series.

G. K. Chesterton's book The Everlasting Man.

Agatha Christie's novel The Secret of Chimneys.

Warwick Deeping's novel Sorrell and Son.

T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men.

Aldous Huxley's novel Those Barren Leaves.

Margaret Kennedy's novel The Constant Nymph.

Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Births

7 January - Gerald Durrell, naturalist, zookeeper, author, and television presenter (at Jamshedpur, India) (died 1995)

13 February - Stuart Wagstaff, English-Australian actor (died 2015)

17 February - Ron Goodwin, composer and conductor (died 2003)

21 March - Peter Brook, theatre and film director

23 March - David Watkin, cinematographer (died in 2008)

25 March - Antony Quinton, philosopher (died 2010)

2 April - George MacDonald Fraser, author (died 2008)

3 April - Tony Benn, politician (died 2014)

12 April - Oliver Postgate, animator, puppeteer and writer (died 2008)

22 April - George Cole, actor (died 2015)

11 May - Rhodes Boyson, English educator and politician (died 2012)

3 June - Thomas Winning, Archbishop of Glasgow (died 2001)

28 July - John Stonehouse, disgraced government minister (died 1988)

30 July - Alexander Trocchi, writer (died 1984)

12 August

Norris McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records (died 2004)

Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records (killed 1975)

18 August - Brian Aldiss, science fiction author

27 August - Nat Lofthouse, footballer (died 2011)

8 September - Peter Sellers, comedian and actor (died 1980)

23 September - Denis Twitchett, Cambridge scholar and Chinese historian (died 2006)

13 October - Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 2013)

16 October - Angela Lansbury, actress

17 October - Harry Carpenter, boxing commentator (died 2010)

31 October - John Pople, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2004)

10 November - Richard Burton, actor (died 1984)

11 November - June Whitfield, actress

27 November

John Maddox, science writer (died 2009)

Ernie Wise, comedian (died 1999)

23 December - Duncan Hallas, Trotskyist (died 2002)

Deaths

3 February - Oliver Heaviside, mathematician (born 1850)

6 February - James Kenyon, businessman and cinema pioneer (born 1850)

24 February - Joseph Rowntree, Quaker and philanthropist (born 1836)

20 March - George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India (born 1859)

28 March - Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baron Rawlinson, general (born 1864)

4 April - W. W. Rouse Ball, mathematician and lawyer (born 1850)

6 April - Alexandra Kitchin, model for Lewis Carroll (born 1864)

7 May - William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, soap-maker and philanthropist (born 1851)

14 May - H. Rider Haggard, writer (born 1856)

22 May - John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, World War I field marshal (born 1852)

20 November - Alexandra of Denmark, queen of Edward VII of the United Kingdom (born 1844)

18 December - Hamo Thornycroft, sculptor (born 1850)