Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is buried in St Anne's churchyard in Kew.

England's champion pugilist, the Jewish prize-fighter Daniel Mendoza, publishes The Art of Boxing

William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself

In his Principles Jeremy Bentham defines 'utility' as that which enhances pleasure and reduces pain

Robert Tunstall builds a replacement stone bridge at Kew, designed by James Paine. It is opened by King George III driving over ‘with a great concourse of carriages’

Joseph Haydn sets off for England, where impresario Johann Peter Salomon presents his London symphonies

Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel

English painter J.M.W. Turner is only 15 when a painting of his, a watercolour, is first exhibited at the Royal Academy

After centuries as a chapel of Kingston, and 22 years in which it shared a parish with Kew, St Peter’s is established as a parish in its own right.

Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches

Naval officer George Vancouver sails from Britain on the voyage which will bring him to the northwest coast of America

London's Albion Mills burn

Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

Scottish painter Henry Raeburn depicts the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch

English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man

George III sends Lord Macartney on an embassy to the Chinese emperor Qianlong

Britain joins other European nations in war against France, mainly in naval engagements in the West Indies and Atlantic

Lord Buckingham dies and the Marble Hill estate passes to Lady Suffolk's great niece Henrietta Hotham. She lives in the house briefly and then rents it out, living some of the time in Little Marble Hill, a house built in the grounds.

The treaty agreed by US envoy John Jay restores some degree of friendship between the USA and Britain

William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'

Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity

York House has various owners and tenants, being bought by Count, later Prince, Starhemberg, Austrian Ambassador who instals a private chapel.

In Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner inoculates a boy with cowpox in the pioneering case of vaccination

Horace Walpole dies and the Strawberry Hill estate is left to his niece, Anne Seymour Damer, a well-known sculptress, for her lifetime.