Eight members of the Manchester United football team die in an air crash when flying back to England from Belgrade via Munich

Lynn Seymour creates the first of many roles for MacMillan, dancing the Adolescent in The Burrow

Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin

Chicken Soup with Barley begins a trilogy by English playwright Arnold Wesker

Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka's play The Swamp Dwellers is produced in London

English author Alan Sillitoe publishes his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

18-year-old British pop singer Cliff Richard has his first hit single with Move It

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is launched in Britain with Bertrand Russell as president

Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week

Australian soprano Joan Sutherland becomes a star overnight with her performance at Covent Garden in Lucia di Lammermoor

The Mini is launched, designed by Alec Issigonis, and becomes the best-selling British car of all time

After nearly a century as a museum, the Orangery reverts to citrus cultivation before taking on its current role as Kew Gardens' main refreshment building.

The first prototype of the Hovercraft, designed by British engineer Christopher Cockerell, crosses the English Channel

Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar

Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation

British author Laurie Lee remembers a Cotswold boyhood in Cider with Rosie

Billy Wright becomes the first football player to win 100 caps for England

A Liverpool group of musicians call themselves Long John & the Silver Beatles – a name soon shortened to something more memorable

English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells

The English revue Beyond the Fringe has its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival

Paul Scofield plays Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

British artist Anthony Caro begins welding and painting abstract metal sculpture

The remaining part of Whitton Tower or Whitton Castle, a gothic tower built in the grounds of Whitton Park in the 1740s, is demolished.

Penguin Books are prosecuted for obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and are acquitted

British artist Bridget Riley creates patterns that produce unexpected optical effects, in a style that becomes known as op art